Pedagogy
by Armidion
Summary: When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, We perish'd, each alone.  Professor Charles Xavier intends to take these words to heart.  An AU set at a university on the fringes of the District of Columbia.  Eventual Erik/Charles.
1. Monarch of All I Survey

A/N: You know when you watch a movie and you're intrigued by the actors and you watch it a few more times and then suddenly you've seen _everything ever made ever_ that may have even _potentially_ involved said actors and then you're lurking around tumblr all the time obsessing over a certain bromance and your mother is wondering why you don't talk to her anymore? No? Just me?

Anyways, this is a university AU with a plot and more than one chapter, which is a total first for me. I would appreciate any comments or advice since I have stepped out of my usual zone of comfiness. I have sort of an outline and everything, though it kind of builds up slowly. It will eventually be Erik/Charles and they will be slashed at some point, another first, so like I said, advice would be great! Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men universe or any of the characters therein. I'm just borrowing them. I also do not own any of William Cowper's poetry (which is pretty fly, if you ask me), though that may or may not be public domain at this point.

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><p><em>I am monarch of all I survey,<br>My right there is none to dispute;  
>From the centre all round to the sea,<br>I am lord of the fowl and the brute._

Professor Charles Xavier concedes that these words are true enough. They had, after all, been penned by the infallible William Cowper, his great grandfather's favorite poet and namesake of the very campus around which he currently strolled. Even just brushing the minds of the many students who passed him by, Charles can feel the heady taste of independence flit across his conscious and ghost across his tongue, though a mere impression of his own days at university. Admittedly, it is marred by jittery freshman fretting over the location of their classrooms and upperclassmen ruing the fact that they have to take such and such class with so and so whom they had heard was simply awful(_a fucking travesty_, seemed to be the most popular phrasing this quarter, in fact, though Charles had refused to think in such rude terminology). And the few butterflies flitting about in each of their stomachs has already become an angry swarm of nausea in his own. He hopes to at least quell the urge to expel his upper GI tract by mid-afternoon.

Despite the discomfort, he has his mind about him yet to admire the words above, etched into the wall of the building looming at the northern edge of the campus over a century ago. They are fitting, he thinks. Granted, they apply to a man who had been marooned on an island for several years. Anything to cope with the isolation, Charles had surmised. But as he basks in the early morning sun, watching as the rays strike the dew, casting a charming incandescence across the lawn and towards the heart of the city, he finds himself willing to allow it to be taken out of context. Maybe it's a tad melodramatic – _definitely melodramatic_, he thinks wryly – but as much of a pragmatist as he can be, he thinks the university itself, skirting the boundary of the District of Columbia as it does, is rather like an island for the lot of them, sequestered in the surrounding neighborhood, obscured by the nearby presence of the nation's capital. The wooded areas beyond their ocean, perhaps, the many ongoing intellectual endeavors their makeshift spears and their sputtering campfires –

"Brooding again, Charles?" His bright blue eyes flare with amusement. _Moira_, he whispers softly into her mind. He had felt her approaching for a minute or two now, climbing down the stairs with a coffee in one hand and – he guesses, judging by the tag poking out of the safety lid and flittering in the breeze – an Earl Grey in the other. Apparently, Ms. MacTaggerte knows Charles well enough not to expect any essence of surprise in the curl of his lips. She simply hands him the cup and offers him a smile of her own in return.

"I've told you before," Charles answers, and pauses to take a sip. "I do not _brood_. I ponder. There is a profound difference, my dear."

Professor Xavier, Moira muses, may be the only man on the planet, aside from her father that is, who can use the phrase _my dear_, and not sound like a pedophile.

"Don't be ridiculous. It's perfectly common."

"Quit reading my thoughts," Moira says, though she doesn't mean it, and is still smiling as they amble towards the courtyard, her arm looped through the crook of his elbow. They pass a few students along the way, one of which waves an amiable, even enthusiastic hello at Charles (_very bright young woman_, Charles had intoned kindly, though Moira suspected he genuinely thought this of every student that crossed his path). They pass through the archway at the eastern end of the building when Moira looks up at him with worry written in the furrows of her brow.

"How are you doing, Charles?" _It's only the first day of classes and you look wrecked_, she thinks loudly, clearly intending for the thought to traverse the space between them.

_Thank you for that_, he thinks back. Aloud, he sighs, and reaches up to rub at his temple. "Oh, as good as is to be expected, I suppose."

"That bad, huh?"

He laughs and takes one of her hands between one of his own and squeezes gently. "Don't fret over me, Ms. President." She rolls her eyes at the title, nevermind that it's true. Charles calls her President the way she calls him Professor, teasing, even a little mocking at times. "This certainly isn't my very first rodeo, as you Americans put it. The beginning of every quarter is just the same, a transition period, some rougher than others."

"Some as in this one?" Moira says, and her tone is oddly accusatory.

Charles frowns and reaches out with his mind, his sixth sense, and brushes his own conscious delicately, purposefully, against hers, catching snippets of a none-too-antiquated conversation with his dear sister, Raven. Of course, just how _dear_ she was to him was certainly going to be a topic of dispute if what he suspected was true. He had specifically told her _not_ to tell any of the other professors (at least the ones that were aware of his mutation), and especially Moira, that the beginning of each year strained his telepathic barriers, though he supposed that was more an invitation to do _exactly_ _this_ than anything else.

He considers letting his suspicions go unaddressed, but can't resist the temptation to gather more fodder for over-the-dinner-table squabbling. _That fickle turncoat_, he thinks fondly as the distinction between his own memories and Moira's fades.

_I guess we just lost track of the time_, he can hear Raven speaking from within Moira's memory, the words reverberating with a hollow quality to which Charles has become well-accustomed. _More than two or so weeks of isolation and Charles kind of tends to wig out when he's back in the city. It's kind of like reverse withdrawal…not that I'd know anything about that._

Reverse withdrawal…he would have to remember to ask Raven about that sometime soon, he thinks darkly. Either that or go rifling through her sock drawer, the way he sometimes ached to rifle through the contents of her mind.

And he most certainly does not _'wig out'_, whatever the devil that means.

" – heard you spent some time in Canada this summer. Lonesome, was it?" Moira is still chatting away good-naturedly, though if the twinkle in her eyes is anything to go by, she knows exactly what Charles is up to. After all, she had never expressly forbidden his _fiddling_, as she oft referred to it in public in rather miserable attempts at being furtive. Which, of course, has the majority of the student population believing that, not only are they a couple (_Ew_, Raven had said, and Dr. Hank McCoy, friend and colleague, also of the so-called _dear_ category, had agreed, _she's like your other sister or something_), but that they also, by engaging in said fiddling in bars and bowling alleys and what have you, willingly offer themselves up to some sort of rampant voyeurism.

But that twinkle, he knows, belies her many concerns, most of which, as of late, have centered on the mutants who attend Cowper University. She certainly isn't selfish or heartless enough to dwell on her own reputation, though sometimes Charles wishes that she would. Instead she dallies about her office until all hours of the morning, working herself into a panic over the progress of the students, mutant and human alike, how abilities are affecting the classroom and _oh Christ, what if someone starts rioting over this_.

"Oh, Moira," Charles says, his tone suddenly grave, yet affectionate, coloring the scenery in shades and shadows that had not quite been there before. For just a moment, she wonders if he's deliberately tampering with her vision.

"No, actually, I'm not." _Damn telepaths_. He chuckles before taking hold of her arm, his long, pale fingers wrapped gently around the meeting of her elbow and forearm, and steering her towards the back entrance of the Central Administration Building – or CAB building, a title whose redundancy makes Charles laugh the way only someone like Charles can laugh at something like redundancy.

"Be careful not to worry yourself into an early grave, my dear," Charles says, emphasizing the trailing endearment just enough to make Moira wonder whether or not it had been intentional, while his lips, rosy and wet as he continues sipping away at his tea, stretch over his pearly white teeth. Then he leans in for a moment, brow quirked. "There are far worse fates to suffer. The shock of voices can be painful, yes, but I wouldn't be much worse had I spent the evening prior at the pubs."

Moira's own expression softens in sympathy. She knows he's lying. And Charles once more finds himself appreciative of this woman, this _human_, who so graciously adheres to his idealist sentiments, providing him with glorious imaginary fuel should he wake to discover one more attack on mutant-kind, one more whisper of the phrase _Mutant Registration_ among the powers that be. It does him well to pretend that it's all a dream every now and again.

"Just be careful, alright? I'll be in my office if you need me." By _if you need me_, he can tell that she means, _it's your turn to get coffee tomorrow, Charles, I'm not even kidding_. "Meetings now. Meetings _forever_, I think," Moira says by way of goodbye, chuckling at her own description of her drab fate as she turns to make her way back up the stairs and out of sight. Charles takes one more sip of his tea, which has already been doing wonders for the bile that's been burning in his stomach since the sudden influx of students two days before. It has his _cup runneth-ing over_, as Raven so likes to put it. _Speaking of Raven_, Charles thinks to himself as the infernal contraption in his pocket buzzes against his thigh. He extricates it carefully from the folds of fabric, fearful as ever that it will vibrate its way out of his grasp and into a pile of chips and LCD's and whatnot on the sidewalk below. _Have fun in class, lol,_ it reads. As Charles moves along, he catches himself wondering, as he always does, why everything that Raven has ever texted him throughout his lifetime is worthy of audible laughter, a point which has his head spinning whenever she tries to explain to him the finer points of popular culture. He just gives a dismissive shrug as he makes his way purposefully down the sidewalk and across the quad, turning up a metaphorical collar against the storm of papers and manic students and research and (potentially) drunken escapades that he knows is to come.

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><p>Turtlenecks for reviews (lol).<p> 


	2. Dear and Kind Defender

A/N: Thanks for the alerts and reviews and stuff guys. It really means a lot! Like, as in I obsess over it, a lot. Oh, and sorry about the turtlenecks. I had them put in layaway, but the store owner said a _very _charming man with 8,241 teeth and a blue eyed accomplice broke in and stole them all. *shakes fist* Curse you, McFassy!

Anyways, here is part two. I hope it's not dragging or sucking or anything. Happy reading!

Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men universe or any of the characters therein. I'm just borrowing them. I also do not own or specifically endorse any of the brand name foods mentioned. And although I'm not sure if a disclaimer applies here, I do not own the Rate my Professor website or William Cowper's poetry. Best to be safe, I suppose.

Warning: There is some extra foul language in here. Nothing I don't say in quick succession when the bathroom door gets stuck, though.

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><p><em>My dear and kind defender<em>

_Preserves me safely here,_

_From men of pomp and splendor_

_Who fill a child with fear_

- William Cowper

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><p>Carson Square conveniently hosts the biology, the physics and the psychology departments all in one fairly massive, colonial style building. Charles, who derives pleasure from the challenges offered by all three of these subjects, had been delighted at the prospect. However, as he was soon to discover, they may as well be at opposite ends of the campus, because the dreadful place has one of the most baffling numbering schemes he has ever encountered. The floors are inverted (Hank's <em>first floor office<em>, for example, begins with the number _five_), and two imaginary vertical lines divide the building into three areas, so that, at any moment, as you walk down the hallway, the room numbers, which have been steadily increasing, begin decreasing inexplicably. Between the two of them, Hank and Charles can probably cure every disease known to man. But they have wondered the halls of Carson Square and its adjoining laboratories, delirious and frustrated, for more time than either cares to admit.

Luckily enough, Charles' first class, an Introduction to Genetics course which he had been teaching every fall quarter – _since the dawn of time_, he thinks cheekily – since he had been taken on, is always in the northwestern corner of the second floor. In order to spare himself the confusion, Charles watches his feet as he walks along, something he will be doing every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next ten weeks. Though he has never much been a creature of habit, there is always something oddly comforting about the routine. And what's more, between the steady rhythm of his feet as they carry him along, the Earl Grey sloshing around in his stomach, a handful of saltines, and the fizzling anticipation, Charles nearly forgets his raging headache and persistent nausea.

So what if his syllabus has not changed much, and the names and faces of his many students have begun to blur in his normally immaculate memory. And _so_ _what _if he has used the basics of his field as little more than barroom material since he received his M.S. those many years ago. Charles is open enough to admit that he loves students, he loves a good chat and can never quite get over the reaction of the young men and women as he regales them with talk of groovy mutations and _you had best remember this, boys, because it could very well have you married by the end of the school year_ and _don't be fooled by scientific jargon, ladies, just fire it right back._

This particular group of students, as he comes to find, are no different, at first anxiously eyeing one another as if they suspected their classmates of spitting poison and then loosening enough to the point where they are not only laughing at Charles' antics, but doing so _with _one another.

"Mutation can cause some very detrimental conditions, as I'm sure you are aware," he reminds them, taking on a more solemn tone as their giggling ebbs towards silence. It's during moments such as these that he's extra vigilant to keep his mind as much to himself as he possibly can. The way some of his students' lips curl and how their eyes darken speaks enough volumes about the hurt they have experienced at the hands of mere genetic misfortune. No need to add to that library of sorrow and injustice with a telepathic back and forth, his empathy and their melancholy giving one another a leg up until everyone in the room is considering paying the Cowper University Counseling Center (the CUCC or the "cuck" as the students call it) a visit.

"But it is also one of the driving forces behind our own evolution," Charles goes on, leisurely pacing the empty expanse at the front of the room, all the while casually scrutinizing his students with practiced ease. "There are infinite forms of variation in each generation. And all of this through…" He made an expectant gesture with his hands, eyes as bright as his smile.

"Mutation," they chorus, spirits rising. And Charles knows it's going to be a good year.

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><p>Really, Alex Summers figures, he ought to be furious as shit.<p>

Just a year and a half ago, he had been happily tucked away in solitary confinement in a prison just down the way. Then a man, a stupid Mother Theresa of a man, had the audacity to offer him a second chance. To allow him to stay in his sickeningly opulent house and eat all of his chex mix and _don't you worry, Alex, I never liked the cheddar flavor that much anyhow_. To fuss and fawn over his mutation like it's God's gift to the human race and help him tamp it down into an admittedly useful tool instead of the obstreperous man-killer he had forever thought it would be. And not to mention that he was now attending a _university_, for Christ's sake, laboring underneath the pressures of the first day of the first year of his general engineering degree because he had felt to it would be far too thankless of him to mill around undecided. Especially considering that the only rather tenuous tether between him and this educational establishment is the very same saint-in-disguise, Charles Xavier or _Professor _Xavier or _Dr_. _Xavier_ or whatever the hell he's supposed to call him nowadays.

_Chaz is alright_, Sean Cassidy, another project of the professor's, had told him the day they met, nodding his shaggy red head up and down with a look in his eye that said _'you know what I mean'._ Of course, Alex certainly had _not_ known what he meant, and had spent the next week and a half tip-toeing around the house like it was an Indiana Jones movie death trap, mummies and arrows and poison gas and shit just waiting to take him down in his prime.

And then, one devilishly hot afternoon in July – like, as in _fucking_ _Satan_ had decided to bring hell to Earth for a couple of days just so they could see what is was like – a bunch of guys in gaudy orange vests were tearing up the yard as if it had killed all their mothers (_underground power lines,_ Charles had said, his tone disparaging as he looked down on the war zone from the second floor library). Alex had come down the stairs after yet another unsuccessful attempt at cooling off in the shower, because apparently this Xavier fellow didn't jive well with air conditioning as he had seemed perfectly comfortable wondering around the house in his usual slacks and button down. Needless to say he was shocked when he saw an outdoor garden house coiling its way from the front door and down the eastern hall – which, fortunately for them, had always sloped where the foundation had compressed – where Charles and Sean were gleefully inflating a double-track slip n' slide. And then they were rocketing up and down the thing after they managed to secure the corners with rounded stones fetched from the periphery of the depredated gardens. Their faces were red with mirth, Charles laughing about how royally fucked (Sean's words, not his, of course) he would have been had he done such a thing when he was a child while Cassidy tried desperately _not_ to shatter the French doors at the end of the hall.

_Yes_, Alex thought to himself resolutely. _I ought to be pissed. _Because suddenly he has a family, a pretty cool dad and infuriating yet strangely lovable siblings and a weird sort of an uncle man-child (that would be Hank McCoy, one of Charles' colleagues/children). And he and Sean are striking it out on their own, crashing in some small but decent apartment just five blocks away from the Professor. And they have a closet full of alarm clocks because, between the two of them, they average about one smashed and/or singed and/or obliterated demonic, early morning noise maker per week when they head off to work, Sean to the CU bookstore and Alex to a café where, apart, they're less likely to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe (as Charles' sister Raven had so delicately put it).

So now he has hope and ambition and things he wouldn't want to leave behind if it came down to it and he has to run again. He could go on. _Oh, _how he could go on. But apparently Charles Xavier possesses an endless supply of encouragement and good advice and amusing, moral-teaching anecdotes. Because Alex has somehow managed to take it all in stride, and is currently strolling down the second floor of the main lecture building in Carson Square where Charles (or Xavier, Doctor, Professor, _whatever_) has his office. Evidently eager to hear Alex's opinion on post secondary education, Charles had invited him to stop by that afternoon for tea or coffee or something so they could _have a good chat_, whatever that really means.

As Alex moves along, he finds himself more than a little grateful that he's visited Charles in his office and around the laboratories the year before, when he had been too Mr. Destructo to actually attend but stable enough not to cause a nuclear meltdown every time he walked by sensitive equipment (which begs the question as to what _isn't_ sensitive when you shoot lasers from your body). Not only does he now have a chance at finding anything in the damn labyrinth, but also at doing so in a timely manner, sparing him that _oops I'm late on the first day, yeah go ahead and stare, asshole_ moment that a few of his classmates had suffered during his two morning lectures. Charles told him that even _he_ had trouble making his way around, which Alex had seriously doubted before he had witnessed it in person. Which is why he had understood the professor's relief when he had learned that his Population Genetics (_ugh_, Alex thought, the title alone leaving a bitter taste on the back of his tongue) class was just around the corner from where his and several other professor's offices are situated. And also where Alex currently lurks, conscious of the fact that it would probably appear as if he were about to commit a felony if he were lurking around Charles' locked office instead.

So Alex decides to wait, considering that they only have a minute or more to go anyhow. He presses his back up against the wall, wedging himself in between an incomprehensible poster display entitled _Radiation and Induced Apoptosis _(a wtf moment if he ever saw one) and the door, whose wide glass window provides him a perfect view of Charles and the eight kids nerdy/masochistic enough to willingly subject themselves to such abject horrors. Of course, Charles looks as animated and in-his-element as ever, smiling and laughing and coaxing laughter out of the students in turn and making everyone feel like they belonged there, _that bastard_, Alex thinks blithely, toothy smiles threatening his lips and brow. Only Professor Xavier can make the first day of some boring-ass, upper class biology thing look like a group therapy session for the Care Bears. He just barely manages to suppress the urge to roll his eyes as the clock strikes one and the geeks come parading out of the room, looking like Christmas has come early.

Only once the echo of their chatter has followed them down the stairs does Alex slink inside, still feeling horrendously out of place what with being surrounded by normal people doing normal things.

"Hey…Professor," Alex decides, figuring it's best to err on the side of caution when they're in Charles' natural habitat.

"Alex, hello," Charles says, gathering up a haphazard stack of papers and coming to meet him at the door, smile as warm and pleasant as the familiar sensation stirring in the back of Alex's mind that serves as more of a hello than the words that come out of his mouth. "Have you had a good day so far?"

Alex hesitates. He wants to embellish, to tell him that it's the best day of his life and _thanks man, I owe you one, let's brofist_. But he catches his tongue, cognizant of the lie detector walking beside him down the hall and unlocking the office door. So he just says, "Pretty good." and slumps down in the chair in front of the desk, letting his backpack slide off his shoulder and onto the wooden floor with a dull thud.

Charles, meanwhile, is reaching down into the mini fridge tucked away beneath his desk, pulling out a couple of colas and a package of Twinkies (he is an irremediable sweet tooth and, oddly enough, keeps his candy cache tucked away in the fridge or the freezer, claiming that eating room temperature confections is positively barbaric, not to mention hideously revolting). He looks up when Alex replies, his left brow quirked up towards his hairline.

"You've had two classes so far," Charles remarks and Alex wonders why he even bothers having conversations with anyone when he can just look at you and live your whole life in a matter of minutes. "Why don't you tell me about them."

Alex reaches for a soda and pops the cap, chugging half the can before replying, "Should I lay down for this?"

Charles just smiles, his brow arching a little higher as he slides the now open and already half empty Twinkie package across the desk, though he has to swerve it around to avoid smashing it into stacks of papers and folders and piles of who-knows-what-else.

"Alright," Alex sighs, grabbing the Twinkie and shoving half of it down his throat. "I had chemistry first…at fucking _seven fifteen in the morning_."

Charles looks like he's trying not to laugh. "Dr. McCloud?"

"Is that his name? I was too busy throwing back a bottle of amphetamine to listen." Alex pauses to inhale the rest of his Twinkie. "Between his tone of voice and the fact that the _sun_ isn't even up yet, I thought I might slip into a coma."

"Well, maybe by the end of the quarter he'll have you manufacturing your own amphetamine."

"If he's still _alive_ by the end of quarter." Alex crumples up the empty Twinkie package and tosses it across the room, into the garbage can in the corner. "I've seen dead people that are less, you know, _dead_."

Charles nods. "He really should retire. Why didn't you take it with Dr. Crowley instead? She's much more animated and her classes are always scheduled for the afternoon."

Alex's face screws up in distaste. "Because she's a bitch."

The eyebrow again. Alex tries not to slide further down in his chair. "Oh?"

"I use Rate my Professor, er, _Professor_. Pretty much everybody on there was like, 'You could take chem 121 with Dr. Crowley. Or you could just hang yourself.'"

Surprisingly, Charles throws his head back and laughs, heartily. "She's certainly not the most amiable of ladies, no." Which is about as close as Charles will ever get to admitting that _yeah, Alex, she's a fucking bitch_. He can almost imagine him saying it, imitating his posh British accent in his head. It makes him want to smile or laugh or something, but in the interest of not appearing a lunatic, Alex just lets his gaze wonder over Charles' shoulder instead and out the open window. And for a minute or so, the two of them fall into an easy silence, Alex just soaking up the presence of a good-natured telepath and said telepath soaking up the fact that said boy was soaking anything up in the first place.

Then Charles leans forward in his chair and takes a deep breath. Alex's eyes dart back to his. "So, what did you have next?"

"Oh, uh," he clears his throat. "Physics. Some creepy guy called Lehnsherr. Dr. Len-sher or Dr. Len-ser or something. He sounded European." _Slash_ he sounded like he had killed several people in their sleep and then laughed about it to his imaginary friends the next day, a thought which Alex tries very hard not to broadcast.

"Huh," Charles says, and he drops his chin in the palm of his hand. "I'm not familiar with Dr. Lehnsherr."

"Yeah?"

"Yes," Charles answers needlessly. "Normally I'm up to speed on this sort of thing. But since Raven and I were in Canada up until the beginning of the year, I'm afraid I must have fallen out of the loop." Alex nods, recalling that Charles and Raven made a point to spend some time alone together every summer. Alex and Sean had 'house sat' i.e. ate all his food and broke at least two priceless artifacts while they had been away, climbing rocks and 'reconnecting with nature' or whatever tripe the brochure Raven had been flashing around was peddling.

"Well, he didn't have an entry on Rate my Professor, so I figured he was new. It was either roll the dice with this guy – " And if he had been playing craps, he suspects he would have come out with snake eyes. " – or take it with some other guy whose exams apparently give children nightmares."

"Not happy with your bet, then?" Charles smirks as he taps his temple, clearly an indication that he had been broadcasting, and Alex rues the day this man was born.

"I don't know," he grumbles, half to himself. Then: "I think he's bipolar or something."

Charles cocks his head. "What makes you say that?" "I don't know," Alex repeats, rolling his shoulders. "First he was tossing out the syllabuses – "

"Syllabi," Charles corrects. A reflex more than anything else.

"Right, uh, _syllabi_, like they were on fire. Then he was thundering around the room, asking everyone's name and then staring at their face for a few seconds like he was memorizing us for his hit list. He was glaring crazy-daggers at anyone who asked a question and threatening to throw electronic devices out the window. Then he starts going on about how some of those papers we signed when we were enrolling were clearing him of any liability if we screwed some shit up and killed ourselves in the lab." _This_ is Alex's most distinct memory of those torturous fifty minutes, wishing he would just melt into a puddle on the floor when Dr. Lehnsherr had fixated his icy stare on him, as if he _just knew_ that he was a natural disaster waiting to happen. "I don't know if he was joking or what, but nobody laughed. _But then_, when he starts lecturing, it's like all of sudden Morgan Freeman is narrating March of the Penguins. And then we're all leaving and he even kind of smiles a little bit – like it was sort of creepy but maybe that's just the way he looks when he smiles – and _damn_ does he have like five hundred teeth."

Throughout his tirade, Charles had simply sat on the edge of his chair, hands clasped together on his desk, his eyes flickering from amused to curious to puzzled and then back to amused all in the span of about thirty seconds.

"Well," he says, laughter coloring the tone of his voice. "I suggest you keep your phone on silent and your head in your foxhole."

"Gee thanks," Alex says. At the mention of his cell, he pulls it out of his pocket and checks the time, noting that he has fifteen minutes before his first English lit class (which, by the way, he had begged Charles to use his superb mind powers to get him out of, though that had only served to send him on a passionate stint about the merits of good reading and writing skills).

"Don't fret, Alex," Charles says, noting the time as well as he rises from his seat to see him out the door. Although, admittedly, it's such a small space that there's really no need. "Some professors like to intimidate their students on the first day, thinking it will garner them some semblance of respect." He can tell by the way that Charles says _respect_ that he doesn't put much stock in that method. _Thank God._

Alex just shrugs as he throws his backpack over his shoulder and steps out the door. "See you later, Professor."

"Do try and have a good afternoon," Charles says, that sort of fatherly tone that Alex can tell he tries to repress leaking into the lilt of his voice. "And tell Sean I said hello. If you see him, that is."

"Will do." And then Alex is off, trying to derive comfort from how much of a babe everyone online has said this Dr. Lucas is supposed to be.

* * *

><p>Charles cannot help but to chuckle to himself as he settles back into his office chair. Although, whether it's glee from looking on as Alex tries for autonomy or amusement at the expense of the typical direction of his thoughts as he heads towards his next lecture is unclear.<p>

But then, once more alone, though not with his own thoughts as the saying goes, Charles prods carefully at his forehead, a bit mystified to be honest. Although, what concerns him most is not an ache or a pain, but the lack thereof. And while he had relished his Twinkie (_good heavens, is there anything better than American snack cakes?_), he had fully expected to survive the day on crackers and pasta and Sprite and what have you, distracted enough by his classes to make it through unscathed but sickly enough to have to moan away the interim period in his locked, shaded office.

However, after he and Moira had parted ways and he began approaching Carson Square, his flu-like symptoms had abated, replaced by a foreign yet pleasant humming which vibrated almost imperceptibly at the very back of his mind. So far back, in fact, that he was tempted to turn around and search for its source. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Charles had since let it slide. And considering, as far as he knows at least (_which is pretty damn far_, Sean quipped every time it slipped his mind to _not_ say that expression out loud), that the Earth still revolves around the sun and his friends and family are still alive and well, he figures it's no use twisting his stomach.

_But still_, his mind whispers. Yes, Charles agrees, _but_ _still_. Perhaps he will ask Hank about it later. In the meantime, there's a Nutty Bar in the refrigerator with his name on it and already dozens of unanswered messages on his computer. Best not to let his good health go to waste.

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><p>Reviews are much appreciated. Next time we'll get some honest to goodness Erik introduction. In the meantime, happy reading and writing and whatever else you guys do.<p> 


	3. In Ocean, Self Upheld

A/N: I'm sort of at that this-story-sucks-how-can-anyone-like-it point in the writing process. But I will soldier on! *queue inspirational music* I hope you enjoy this third part.

And thank you guys very much for your reviews and favoriting and alerting and stuff. Your comments make me squee/lol/nod thoughtfully, which makes a very happy writer indeed!

Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men franchise or any of the characters therein. I'm just borrowing them. I do not own William Cowper's poetry either. I also do not own Inspector Gadget, which is briefly mentioned.

Warning: Some more foul language. Less f-words than the last chapter though (I counted). And also some maybe-nauseating fixation on Charles'/James' eyes. But they're just _so_ _gosh darn blue_.

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><p><em>He long survives, who lives an hour<em>

_In ocean, self-upheld;_

_And so long he, with unspent pow'r,_

_His destiny repell'd_

William Cowper

* * *

><p>Erik Lehnsherr has been wandering down the halls in the main building of Carson Square, brow furrowed and eyes sharp, for several minutes now. It's the early afternoon, the first Friday of the week, evident in the way the students are practically skipping to and fro, chattering endlessly about so-and-so's party, the unjust amount of homework that they are working diligently to put off or about how some marginally famous person is going to be in D.C. on such date and <em>wouldn't it be great if we could get tickets?<em> or something to that effect. They've tasted a moment of freedom, it seems, and are celebrating that fact by laughing manically and shouting at one another from either end of the hallways as if that's perfectly acceptable. Erik suspects that it had been exactly this sort of boisterous behavior that had the majority of the office doors in the building slamming shut at around ten o'clock that morning. Either that or, tempted by the mild climate – there _was_ a rather pleasant, late-September breeze, he admitted silently – and the abundant sunshine, several of his colleagues had wiped clear their busy schedules for a bit of wandering of their own in one of the many parks hugging the edge of town.

Erik, however, tends to prefer this environment, and it's no surprise as to why. Though the outdoor scenery has its charm (not that he has much use for natural aesthetics), he much prefers being surrounded by signs and symptoms of industry – namely, a soul-satisfying abundance of metal. At first glance, many of the somewhat ornate buildings on campus don't appear to harbor much of the stuff. But with just a nudge of his abilities, the subtle disintegration of the walls he erects in order to protect himself and those around him from accidental catastrophe, he can feel every nut, bolt, screw, pipe and what have you, humming a toneless lullaby. A fitting description, if ever he heard one, for if he were being honest with himself, Erik would concede that, in buildings such as these – fairly quiet, predominantly wooden structures, whispering their potential to him from behind walls smeared with plaster and paint – he finds himself feeling tired. Not the _oh fuck, I've been running for so long, need to stop, _have_ to stop_ sort of tired that, ironically enough, keeps him awake on more nights than he can count. It's a notion of security, one which he can never recall having felt with another human being save for his mother, and even she is little more than impressions of smiles and laughter and a gently beating heart…

_Stop it_, Erik chastises himself. Those sorts of trains of thought never go anywhere productive. And he has been in a decent mood thus far, despite the fact that, as the newest lackey, he had been saddled with teaching an introductory physics course in the wan morning light. As if the gum chewing, seat kicking and blank stares isn't enough, he has to wander up and down the aisles of the lecture hall and keep a hawk's eye on every individual just to be certain they aren't nodding off or texting or fiddling on the _spaceweb_ or whatever the hell that social networking website was that the kids are prattling about nowadays.

"Uh, Professor Lehnsherr?" A voice, soft and hesitant, sounds from behind. Erik feels a flash of indignation at the interruption of his thoughts, but quickly stifles the frown tugging at his lips and the sigh bubbling in the back of his throat. Then he turns, hands clasped behind his back.

"Ah," Recognition lifts the usual monotone of his voice. "Dr. McCoy."

"Please, uh – " He pauses, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Erik has to resist the urge to run his fingers through his own hair, his body urging him to answer habit for habit. "Call me Hank."

Erik just lifts his chin in reply, as if to say _Not a chance_.

Hank, who's cradling an overfull manila folder under one arm and an old, frayed, ridiculously weathered messenger back under the other, mutters another _uh_ under his breath as he twitches awkwardly to one side in a frankly strange attempt at keeping his haul on his person and off the floor. Erik wonders if the boy, man, whatever-he-is is habitually this nervous, or if his own admittedly disquieting stature is throwing him off balance. Then, of course, he decides it doesn't matter that much anyhow, because if he says 'uh' one more time, he will be forced to end the guy's miserable life.

"I was wondering if we might, uh – " Erik clenches his fists. " – discuss your research sometime."

Erik's frustration with this man's apparent inability to get words from his head to his mouth without a lengthy detour melds into mild surprise. He has seen Dr. McCoy at a couple of department meetings and has been made aware of his so-called 'unique mobility within the mathematics, physics, engineering and biology departments'. Erik had gathered that this was the university administration's way of telling them that _don't fuck with this guy, he's a genius_. However, he still hadn't expected much interest in his area of research. The theoretical physicists around here were still in fits over the latest articles about string theory – some of which Erik thinks is utter bullshit, something that, much to the chagrin his colleagues, he has no trouble pointing out in public settings. And whoever sidesteps that and M-Theory seems to be interested primarily in Carbon nanotubes. While titillating in its own right, he supposes, Erik is always reminded why he became a physicist in the first place.

"Giant magnetoresistance?" Erik asks, a pinch of incredulity leaking into the edge of his voice. "You'd like to discuss that?"

It appears that Hank picks up on his disbelief, because he seems to both brighten and straighten all at once, reaching up to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose, evidently his response to damn near everything. "Oh yes!" And he's off, it seems, because he begins waxing poetic about some project he's been obsessing over for the past several weeks in relation to superconductors and Lord Kelvin and brainwaves and _did you realize we can alter electrical resistance by orders of magnitude?_ Erik wants to bite back with _did you realize I have a doctorate in physics?_ and leave this credulous boy with what would most likely be an infantile expression of hurt smeared over his face. But he's suddenly feeling far too exhausted to waste any energy on hateful snark, and instead makes a show of looking down at his watch, all the while working to fixate his I'm-very-important-and-I-have-somewhere-almost-as-important-as-me-to-be look on his own face.

"Yes, yes," Erik says, rocking back on his heels as he shoves his hands in his pockets. Hank looks startled at the interruption, as if he had forgotten that there was another human being on the receiving end of his blathering. "That's _terribly_ fascinating, Dr. McCoy. But I have a committee meeting, so – "

"Oh!" Hank looks embarrassed, a flush creeping up his neckline. "I'll just, uh – " And he turns around, disappearing nearly as fast as he had appeared, his curiously lurching movements carrying him much more swiftly than would seem possible.

Perhaps this is his rage-fueled impatience talking, but Erik suspects that this Hank McCoy doesn't participate in much collaborative work, if only because his many habits seem tailor made to invoke dark, malicious impulses. Which, of course, would be very counterproductive. _Might just be me, though_, he allows, recognizing that the lens through which he tends to view the world is rather grimy, bathed in the shadows of the past and cracked underneath the pressures endured in view of a stolen boyhood.

_Twice now_, Erik thinks, once more forcibly redirecting his thoughts away from his squalid past. It was this very sort of rumination which had sent him pacing aimlessly down the hall in the first place. He wasn't one for sitting still anyhow. In fact, some of his best ideas had come to him while wandering all over buildings of all shapes and sizes in every which corner of the world. The steady _thump thud, thump thud_ of his shoes against the linoleum or the wood or the concrete or whatever it happens to be at the time gives his mind a direction, a purpose.

Only, he has been feeling curiously introspective as of late, morose even, and occasionally even a bit giddy (highly _out_ _of_ _character_, he thinks). And he wonders if it has anything to do with the recent change of scenery, considering that, prior to nabbing a position here at Cowper University, Erik has only been in America twice before, neither visit lasting for more than a fortnight.

Then he thinks _fuck it_, and sighs exasperatedly all the way from the first floor hallway to his third floor office, avowing that his productivity level has officially reached zero, zilch, _empty_. He hadn't been lying when he told McCoy that he has a committee meeting, only conveniently forgetting to mention that it isn't scheduled for another hour or so (otherwise known as _moderate bullshitting_). So he resigns himself to answering frantic, beginning-of-the-year emails while his subconscious wreaks havoc on the Newton's Cradle on the corner of his desk (the thing has followed him around since his own college days). To be brutally honest, he feels anticipation at the prospect of damn near anything involving more than just him, just Erik Lehnsherr and no superfluous obstacles along the way.

_Obligation_, he reminds himself. Unfortunately, he has to survive the year before he can apply for tenure, meaning that he has to pretend to care about the community – or at least, that's what he gathers from the phrase University Outreach Committee – in the intervening period.

_I can do that_, he thinks, none too thrilled though, of course. And as he scrolls through his inbox, one of the little steel spheres on the Cradle snaps off of its wire, falling to the floor with a resounding _clack_. He curses the little thing and re-attaches it with a huff.

Weeks later, he'll call it foreshadowing.

* * *

><p>"Here we are," Charles says, all smiles and pleasantry. "A coffee for the lovely executive." He hands Moira a steaming mug, careful to let her grasp the handle before turning towards the other end of the table. "And something equally as revolting for my dear sister." Raven takes the offered glass – some insipid combination of fruit and chocolate, judging by the title – with a face, one which Charles does not hesitate to throw right back.<p>

"Really," Moira deadpans, reaching over the napkin dispenser for the sugar and cream. "You're both adorable."

"Don't tell anyone," Charles teases. "It would botch my reputation."

"_Your _reputation," Raven mutters, and Charles bumps her shoulder with his, eyes still alight with the smile he's been carrying around all day.

"You know, Charles," Moira says, looking between the both of them with one eyebrow arching up towards the sweep of her bangs. "You've been in an awfully good mood the past few days."

"You say that as if it's a bad thing," Charles protests.

"First Friday Syndrome," Raven says, nodding her head as if she were some sort of medical professional. "Charles always acts a little stoned at the end of the first week of classes."

Charles sits up straighter in his seat. "I most certainly do _not_."

"Well, not _always_," she grants. Raven turns back to Moira. "He can block it. Sometimes he just…doesn't."

"Block what?" Moira asks between swallows.

"Everyone's Friday high," Raven answers, though she may as well have said _'uh, duh'_. "Although…" She pauses, drumming her fingers on the tabletop, looking over Moira's shoulder thoughtfully, with eyes narrowed and lips pinched between her teeth. "I haven't gone through _near_ as much Advil as we usually do this time of year." Raven nodded, as if that said it all.

Moira, meanwhile, was having trouble reconciling that apparent non sequitur with the rest of the conversation. Then she feels a little nudge in the back of her mind, and finds herself staring directly into Charles' brilliant blue eyes. _She means to say that I've been feeling surprisingly well, given my history._

Aloud, he says, tone sardonic but light: "It would be marvelous if everyone would continue to speak as if I weren't seated at the table."

"Oh, come off it Charles," Raven says, folding her arms over her chest. "Don't think I don't know that you were just _'talking' _to Moira."

"Well, I would hardly be able to get a word in edgewise were it not for all the _'talking'_ I do."

Raven looks fit to retort when Moira quickly intervenes, voice loud and affectedly enthusiastic. "So, Raven, I hear you're hard at work on your senior performance."

Raven, not one to be had on, hesitates for a moment before answering, and Charles notes by the slant of her mouth (considering he has been expressly forbidden from noting anything about the slant of her thoughts) that she is likely considering whether she'd rather bicker with him or talk about her love and learning of music. Luckily for Charles, before she can choose the former, Sean comes strolling through the door and sidling up to their table, light jacket swung carelessly over his shoulders, facetiously reminiscent of the way his hair falls over his forehead and the way his half-laced shoelaces tumble onto the floor between his feet.

"Hey guys," he says. "What's up?"

There are murmurs of _oh, nothing_ and _hm, stuff_ before Raven pipes up with, "We think Charles may be stealing from your stash of weed."

Charles is poised to object when Sean looks down at him and says, "Hey man, not cool."

Raven sniggers into her drink and Moira pretends to be oblivious while Charles throws him a Look, capital L and all. "I mean, what weed?" Sean amends, fiddling with the hem of his shirt, though he doesn't sound apologetic in the least.

"Anyhoo," he says, after a few beats of silence. "Is Alex here?"

"Yep," Raven says, pointing over to the counter. "Deli duty."

Sean turns and spots him leaning over the refrigerated glass case, a wide smile plastered on his face as he chats up some girl pretending to be confused by the difference between smoked and roasted meats.

"Alex!" he shouts, though they're naught but fifteen feet or so from the counter. "Hey, Alex!"

"Dude, what?" Alex answers, looking fairly miffed at the interruption. Meanwhile, Moira is still pretending not to be aware of her surroundings while Raven tries to muffle her laughter. Charles just leans his elbow on the table and scrubs a hand over his face and through his hair, muttering _good heavens _under his breath as the attention of nearly every patron in the café zeros in on their table.

"I need you to call my cell," Sean answers, not quite shouting anymore, though his voice still carries throughout the entire establishment. "I think I left it here yesterday."

Alex rolls his eyes and shuffles his feet.

"Dude, seriously," Sean says, an edge of desperation creeping into his voice.

"Alright, alright," Alex sighs, and pauses in his wooing of the –_ rather unfortunate_, Charles thinks laughingly – young woman to tap a few buttons on his phone, not long after which everyone's attention is redirected towards a booth in the corner of the café, which is now blasting a frightfully tinny version of the Inspector Gadget theme – a running gag between Alex and Sean ever since the former of the two learned that the latter was pursuing a degree in criminology and law. Sean mutters a quick apology to the young couple seated at the booth before diving underneath it unceremoniously and snatching up the phone, giving the keys a good mash so it will, in his words, _shut the hell up, goddamnit_.

Moira, who seems to have rejoined the land of the conscious, gives Charles an incredulous look.

"Yes?" Charles says, hands clasped and brow climbing. He's fighting a smile, though, which has Raven fighting one of her own, at which point Moira is quick to speak before the both of them dissolve into one of their peculiar laughing fits and she can never show her face at this café again (though she's seriously considering adding herself to its blacklist already).

"I can't believe they both lived at your house," she says, nodding towards Sean and then Alex.

"For a _year_," Raven adds, staring off into space the way one might do so after having witnessed a grisly murder.

"Tosh," Charles says, waving his hand dismissively. "It was good fun."

"And by 'good fun', you mean, 'both physically and psychologically damaging'."

"Well, I suppose boarding does come with its – "

"Shit, I'm late! Stupid phone!" Sean is shouting again, and it's almost comical the way everyone in the room startles. He rushes back over to their table and grasps Charles' shoulder. "Chaz! Make 'em think I'm not late, man!"

Charles puts on his best wise-Oxford-graduate face and turns to Sean to deal out another one of his Looks. "I'm sorry, Sean. This is one battle you're going to have to fight on your own."

"Shit!" Sean repeats, and goes running out the door, much to everyone's relief.

"You're so smug, Charles," Raven says, downing the last of her smoothie with one loud, long slurp, placing her on the receiving end of more than one disapproving glance.

Charles turns up his chin. "_Someone_ has to be the adult."

"I suppose it's a good thing Moira is here, then."

Moira has half a mind to agree, but realizes that, if she and Charles don't want to be late for their meeting, she's going to be forced to play mediator once more.

"If we don't want to be in the same boat as Sean, we need to get going," Moira says, shaking her watch from its sleeve and gently tapping its fragile glass face.

"Oh right, of course," Charles says. _Playing the mother card again, are we?_ he adds silently, and Moira shoots him her long suffering _because you're both twelve_ side glance. He just smiles. "Raven, don't you have class?"

Raven refuses to meet his eyes, choosing to mutter, "Bossy, too." Otherwise, she just ignores them with a flip of her hair as Charles, ever the embarrassingly classic gentleman, offers Moira his arm. And they set out.

* * *

><p>"Moira, I've been meaning to ask you about the new physics professor, Dr. Lehnsherr."<p>

They've been walking in a companionable silence for the past few blocks, so Charles' sudden not-quite-a-question throws her off balance. After a few moments of silence, she answers, "Oh?"

"Yes," he says. "I've heard some interesting things about him from Alex and Sean."

"Sean takes physics?" Moira thinks this sounds like the punch line to a joke of the _'a hippie and a bulldozer walk into a bar'_ variety.

Charles laughs. _An apt description, I think._ "No, no. A friend of his does, though. What do you know about him?"

"Well," Moira says, a thoughtful look dulling the color of her eyes. "The physics department has been looking to expand their horizons. From what I understand, Dr. Lehnsherr's area of research isn't very well represented. And apparently he can serve as a junction between theirs and a few of the engineering departments. All good things. On paper, anyhow. We'll see how it pans out."

"Mm-hm." Charles' mouth twists the way that it does when he's itching for something to write with. "Is that all?"

"Personally speaking, I can tell you that he's very, er, _tall_." _And attractive._

A smirk. "Duly noted."

"Dammit, Charles."

He laughs.

* * *

><p>Erik scratches at the back of his head. It isn't that it itches, or that, in a fit of intellectual prowess, he has made haste to throw his quivering limbs into action before the pipes in the walls start creaking, their high pitched whining an omen of imminent ruin (a ruin which had taken place three times before, something which he has to try to feel bad about). It isn't even that, in a show of absent-mindedness, he feels he has to busy his hands while his subconscious stakes a claim on the majority of his mental capacity. Absurdly, he just doesn't know what <em>else<em> he can possibly do with them.

He had arrived at the committee meeting only a few minutes early, aware that being first or last would reflect self-aggrandizement or heedlessness, respectively. Nevermind the deep seeded instinct to remain as obscure as humanly possible. And he isn't nervous or anything. Just aware, _hyper _aware, and it makes him want to fidget. So he forces his hands into his lap and his mind to hush before suspicious things start happening to the metal objects in the room. Even still, they're singing to him, more loudly than earlier that day, and he has to concentrate on _not_ crumpling it to naught.

So he glances around, cataloguing as a form of distraction, and notes the (unfortunately metal-limbed) chairs scattered about the two, oblong (fortunately wooden) tables dominating the center of the room. A few of the other attendees catch his eye as he does this, and, out of habit, he holds their stare until they look away, doubtless unsettled. Soon, he figures, he'll have every other man and woman in the room slouching self-consciously in their chairs.

Nevertheless, he keeps it up, and it's his fifth round of _you look away, no you first_ when he feels it. He reaches up to scratch at the base of his skull because dammit, now it actually _does _itch. But when his stubby nails graze over skin and short, coarse hair, he realizes that the feeling isn't _on_ his head, but _in_ his head, which startles him out of his seat. Something about it compels him to turn around, and he does.

And then he's looking into a pair of eyes, impossibly blue and astonishingly bright. He feels a flash of…well, of _something_, in his mind, and before he can even blink, the legs of one of the chairs crumples, sending a rotund little man rolling to the floor with a bewildered squeak (although, Erik notes by the _c'est la vie_ reaction of most everyone in the room, that this must be the sort of guy to whom these things happen on a regular basis).

"Dr. Lehnsherr," someone says. And it's only when she's standing right in front of him that he notices the sky-eyed man is accompanied by a woman. Namely, he discerns with a glance, the President of the university.

"Ms. MacTaggerte," he mutters, though he can hardly tear his eyes away from that crystal gaze. Abruptly, Erik has become a roiling pot of mistrust and vigilance and uneasiness, all of it overshadowed, though, by a burning curiosity which prompts him to take the man's offered hand.

"Charles Xavier," he says. His voice is quiet and far away. "How do you do?"

Charles' hand is strangely cold, though his grip is sure, steady. And suddenly the feeling is gone, little more than a niggling of what had been but a few moments before. "Erik Lehnsherr," he answers, though he feels as if he's given away much more than that.

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><p>The meeting is on the third floor of the CAB building. And although he had been feeling that strange, yet pleasant humming sensation for a block or two now, Charles just continues to chat with Moira, figuring it's a curiosity he can fuss over later in the day.<p>

But once they actually enter the building, Charles becomes uncharacteristically quiet as it grows in volume (_or maybe strength might be a better word_, he thinks). Moira gives him a nudge, but he just waves her off, feigning a headache.

And then Charles is there, standing in the doorway, looking into eyes chipped from cobalt and laced with copper, because, for some reason, he's hard pressed to recall his path from the door to the conference room. And he's awash in memories not his own – first impressions of warmth of comfort, followed closely by gunshots and screaming and running and terror and anger and sorrow and blood thirst and determination…and Charles prays to God for maybe the tenth time in his entire life that none of this is registering on his face.

_It's happened like this before_, Charles thinks to himself. When he's been appealed to by some friend or colleague to try and makes heads or tails of the dilapidated mind of some poor soul. He's found that it's best to dive in, head first so to speak, to take the storm of both their conscious and subconscious as if it's his daily ablutions and then get to working, get to rebuilding what was lost or fabricating what had never been.

_But never like this_, he thinks paradoxically. It was as if it had all been waiting behind the most poorly constructed dam known to mankind, bursting underneath the pressure of just the gentlest of his mental touches. And the kicker is that only a handful of seconds has rolled by – the death of a chair (_poor_ _Dr_. _Higbee_, he hears Moira think) and then here he is. Alex and Sean and Raven have made jokes about it before, ribbing him about how he might as well be everyone, _anyone_, how he could live as them in only a matter of moments, and _can you tell us how so-and-so, the famous whatever-he-or-she-is would do it or wear it or what have you?_ Though he had joined in the fun every now again, he would still try and explain to them that that wasn't how it worked, that he had to prepare and concentrate so very hard yet so very _little_ because anything else could be fatal.

Which is why this whole…_thing_ is very nearly laughable. Because Charles has actually seen this man's entire life in virtually no time at all. And he finds himself scrambling to throw up walls, to repress it for now so he can reconcile himself with it later. He just barely succeeds before another lifetime ebbs and flows and Moira pulls him along.

"Charles Xavier," he introduces himself, though his voice sounds rather pathetic to his own ears. He is sure to steel the muscles in his hand against another's grip before adding a quick, "How do you do?"

Erik answers with his name, though it's ludicrous how needless his reply is. And Charles almost wants to say _I know_ and _you have an incredible mutation_ and _you're not alone_. But now is most definitely not the time or the place, and it's almost painful tearing his eyes away from Erik's to join Moira at the front of the room, seating himself near the head of one of tables.

And later that night, when Charles is lying in bed, gazing unseeing at his ceiling, he won't be able to recall a single mote of what's said at that meeting. But he will be able recite to anyone who happens by his bedroom the names and birthdates of Erik Lehnsherr's mother's cousins. And once he manages sleep, he will dream of rain and mud and cold and harsh German accents and men with soulless faces.

* * *

><p>And even later that very same night, when Erik is perched at the windowsill, watching the limbs of maple trees scratch at decades-old glass, he won't remember a damn thing that's said at the meeting either. He doesn't manage any sleep himself, but every time he closes his eyes, his entire world is flooded with the color blue, clear and bright and pure. And though he's not sure as to why, the words <em>you're not alone<em> keep echoing through his mind, like a song, sonorous and uplifting.

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><p>Reviews are much appreciated. Have a wonderful [insert temporal indicator]!<p> 


	4. Jewel of the Purest Flame

A/N: Ugh, you guys. _Ugh_. Writing this chapter was like pulling teeth from adamantium statues that don't have teeth. Also, it was hard. _But_, here it is. I apologize for the bla bla character study bla bla this can be, though I still hope you guys like it.

And of course, endless thanks to you reviewers/favoriters/alerters out there. And special thanks to Lantis' s'mores, which were very delicious and helpful in all their hypothetical awesomeness.

Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men franchise or any of the characters therein. I'm just borrowing them. I also continue to not own any of William Cowper's poetry, just as I continue to be too lazy to check whether or not it's public domain anyways.

Warnings: Some more language. About the same as last time. You have Mr. Erik to thank for that.

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><p><em>If every polish'd gem we find,<br>Illuminating heart or mind,  
>Provoke to imitation;<br>No wonder friendship does the same,  
>That jewel of the purest flame,<br>Or rather constellation._

William Cowper

* * *

><p>A week has passed since Charles Xavier met Erik Lehnsherr.<p>

_A week_, Charles thinks, baffled – or eight and a half days, he'll remind himself, if he's feeling particularly self-deprecating – since he's grasped that hand or looked into those eyes or delved into that past. And yet he's still done nothing, said nothing.

_Felt_ something, yes. More than enough, no doubt, perhaps more than he ever wanted to. He's been catching himself thrashing like mad in the middle of the night, having the most horrific fits, when his carefully constructed barriers are at their weakest. As if his own nightmares aren't enough, his subconscious mind is now heaping it on him in double doses, subjecting him to some of the most absurd dream sequences he's ever had the misfortune of bearing witness to. So absurd, in fact, that when Kurt Marko starts chasing him about in a mansion made of screaming hot metal with a belt made of bloody scalpels – his upper lip is always, funnily/morbidly enough, sporting a fake toothbrush moustache, one corner dangling over his mouth, slick with saliva – screaming at him in poorly accented German about how _you'd best move that coin, Professor, before you shame your poor mother's memory_, he's caught somewhere between frenzied laughter and racking sobs. Not to mention that, according to Raven at least, he's been _particularly asshole-ish_ these past several days. One would think that curiosities such as these would be more than enough of an impetus to resolve the matter, to spur Charles to tread headstrong down to Dr. Lehnsherr's office or apartment or wherever he is and extend to him an invitation to their little corner of mutant kind.

_One would be wrong, apparently_, Charles thinks and adds with a sneer, _**eight**__ and a __**half**__ days._

By comparison, it hadn't been but ten minutes after Hank had moved into his office that Charles had rushed down to meet him, enchanted by the fortuitous turn of events and very nearly buzzing with excitement at the prospect of having a mutant colleague, a sympathizer with his cause at worst and an asset at best.

"Another mutant," Charles had said, breathless, though he tried to appear as subdued as physically possible. "How marvelous."

Hank had been bashful, of course, blushing at the way Charles had dragged out the 'a' in the word _marvelous_ and only agreeing to demonstrate his mutation – what Raven had dubbed _a disgustingly high I.Q. and sort of funky yet still kind of awesome hand-feet _– after a great deal of back-patting, smooth-talking cajolery.

But he had become a friend, still _is_ a friend, and not only to Raven (though _friend_ may not be a strong enough term and _alright_, so they're snogging occasionally, he tries not to think about it) and to Charles, with whom he will occasionally whittle away the twilight hours discussing the finer points of biology and psychology and ethics and the like, but also to Alex and Sean. They are comrades, allies, _brothers_ even. And all this despite the initial antagonism that had churned amongst the three – particularly between Alex and Hank – which had too often dissolved into clipped insults and glaring matches of such an epic grade that even Charles' diplomatic skills could do nothing to curtail them. It spoke of progress, adaptability, _evolution_ he might even call it if he's in an unusually mawkish sort of a bent. All things which Raven has accused him– quite crudely, in his opinion – of _getting off on_.

Which is why Charles is currently engaged in a good bout of head scratching. He ought to have stalked the surly German straight back to his office and beseeched him with talk of mutant coteries and political equality and _we can be a part of something here, Erik_. There's always a risk there, certainly, especially when considering, for all intents and purposes, he may as well walk up to the man and say, _Hi, I can read your thoughts and control your actions, let's be friends_.

But it's worth it, Charles thinks. Worth any sort of refusal or suspicion or hostility. Because he has played a witness to that look before. That heart-rending _look_ on someone's faces when he places a kind hand on their shoulder and speaks one of the most powerful phrases in his vocabulary.

_You're not alone._

It may as well be heroin. And like any addict, he's quite literally aching to have it once more. In all actuality, he _should _have it already, should have this Dr. Lehnsherr sitting across from him over a chess board (among many other things, Charles knows that he is quite the enthusiast) discussing students and research and the situation in Washington and whatever else happens to cross their minds.

Instead, here he sits. On a stool. In his kitchen. And frankly, he's _tired_ of considering the why's and the wherefore's. So he slouches over the counter and allows the goings-on in the house to bleed through his barriers and wash over his ears. He can hear Alex and Sean in the throes of a cartoon-induced hysteria in a sitting room down the hall. By rote, he figures that Raven and Hank are off doing heaven-only-knows-what – and possibly Charles if he weren't _prodigiously _respectful of their privacy these days – in the library next door. The sun is peeking over the tree line beyond the eastern wall and a breeze, cool and earthy and fresh, is drifting through the only open window, open _forever_ due to an incident-which-shall-not-be-recounted involving Alex and a blowtorch, instigated by the famous last words: _wouldn't it be cool if something-something_. Not that Charles minds, despite the harsh invectives he had very nearly uttered upon first sight of the gnarled wrought iron and warbled cut glass. He doesn't mind at all, in fact, because that feeling, that sensation of balmy air against clammy skin, helps ground him.

Even so, he's _still_ finding it damn near insurmountable (yes, _damn_ near, Charles thinks, nevermind his contempt for profanity) to think about anything or anyone _but _Erik Lehnsherr. And it ought to be simple, to reconstruct the walls that have been defaced, to gather mortar and stone of durable, metaphorical make so that he can return to himself. Return to himself the way he has done hundreds of times before. But it just…_isn't_.

"Pathetic," he says aloud, because the room has been quiet for far too long, save for distant sounds of laughter and shuffling and his fingertips working out a disjointed rhythm against the countertop.

"Excuse me," a voice says from behind and Charles does his best not to appear startled. That fact that he _is_, though, is like a breath of fresh air, yanking him from thoughts of _danger, darkness, fear, hatred_ and into ones of _busy, Hank, morning, caffeine_. "I have a question," it adds.

And it's Raven, of course – _Raven _Raven, that is, not young Julie Andrews Raven with hair a wispy gold and skin a lustrous cream – with Hank in tow. She breezes in and pours herself another cup of coffee, gulping it down (sans sugar or anything else that would make it less nauseating) while Hank fidgets in the doorway.

"And that would be?" Charles prompts, gesturing expectantly.

"Oh _yes_," she says, pretending at having forgotten that she meant to ask a question. Probably, Charles thinks, just to drill holes in his head. "_Why _are you allowing Alex and Sean to ruin our lives?"

"I'm sorry?" Charles says, and it's an effort not to chuckle, especially when Hank, still lingering behind him, barks a strangled laugh, which earns him a withering glare.

"They come here _every Saturday_, Charles," she informs him, as if he hadn't been aware. "And it's not like, 'oh let's have breakfast and say hi and be friends'. It's like, 'let's prevent everyone _else_ from having breakfast by eating the last of the bread and then blast juvenile TV shows throughout the entire house and shriek like hyenas so no one can get anything done'."

"Nonsense. The television is hardly that loud."

Ravens just _harrumphs_ in reply, folding her arms over her chest with unusual irascibility. Which has Charles arching his brow, because Hank and Sean and Alex have been coming to 'chillaxorz', or whatever they had taken to calling it lately, since the latter two had moved out. Tradition, he figured, since, prior to making off for full fledged university life, he had taken a good chunk of time every Saturday to help them – and by _them_ he means _mostly Alex_ – get a handle on their powers.

"What's this really about, Raven?" His voice has dropped an octave, rising and falling in the same sort of foreboding yet paternal who-left-the-lemonade-out patterning their father used to use before he died.

"_Nothing_," she answers forcefully. But then she's projecting like crazy – not intentionally, Charles recognizes, because it's coming in agitated bursts – with images of her and Hank in a rather scandalous situation on the couch in the sitting room that Sean and Alex had commandeered right from underneath the two of them with taunting guffaws and _oh Jesus, why telepathy? _Because certainly all six quarts of his blood have taken residence in his face.

"Alright," Charles says (or _squeaks_, more like), hoping the matter will put itself to rest. Before the words are even out of his mouth, though, Raven is narrowing her eyes, now just lucent strips of gold, no doubt readying her ill-tempered mouth for another one of their _stay out of my head; no, not unless you quit projecting_ arguments. So he turns to Hank, arms folded as casually as he can manage in his lap.

"Good morning, Hank," he says by way of greeting, because the man's been hovering like an ostracized pack member for a good two or three minutes at this point. And Charles pats the stool next to him with a smile, beckoning. For all his absent-mindedness, Hank seems to recognize that Raven has been _chagrined_ and the best remedy is some idle, subject-changing chat.

"What have you been up to this morning?" Charles asks as Hank ambles on over, perching himself on the edge of the stool and wrapping his absurdly long, gangly legs around and behind the foot rests.

"Oh," Hank says, and there's a gleam in his eyes, clearing away the usual shadows beneath his lashes. "Uh, Raven and I were pulling out some of your old scientific journals."

"Huh." _Is that what you kids are calling it these days?_ he risks thinking loudly at Raven, who coughs a little bit into her mug.

_Don't make me hurt you, Charles, _she thinks back, though years of practice allow her face to remain fairly neutral as she continues simmering with rancor over by the sink. He probably shouldn't be quite so laissez-faire about his much younger sister engaging in illicit activities in the nooks and crannies of his centuries-old home with a professor at the very school she attends. _And_ at which he has worked for several years now. But considering she was born about four months before Hank was, he's just let it slide, both for her sanity and his (maybe a little _more_ for his than hers, though).

"Yes," Hank continues, completely unaware of the sub-conversation occurring right under his nose, though judging by the science-is-my-life look that's dilating his pupils and slackening his jaw, Charles suspects that he could have held spoken out loud and Hank may very well have been just as oblivious as he is now. "I was thinking that we might find something useful. You know, uh, in reference to that neural amplifier I've been telling you about."

"Ah," Charles says and isn't he just awfully monosyllabic this morning? He can feel the beginnings of concern blooming at the back of Raven's mind, though it's still tinged red with choler, so he's quick to add, "Well, have you got the plans with you?"

Hank looks down at his feet, a wave of nearly palpable abashment roiling its way down the arch of his spine. Charles has to blink and lean back to quell the urge to brush it aside, mindful of his promise to leave the children's minds be, nevermind his instincts to do just the opposite. "Um, no, actually. I…I forgot them."

The way Hank says _I forgot them_ sounds something like _I ran over a box of puppies_, and Charles is torn between pity at the boy's sensitivity and laughter at his tendency to overreact. He has to avoid meeting Raven's eye in order to resist indulging in the latter. As tactless as she can be, though, she seems happy to snicker by herself as she flits across the room to jab Hank in the shoulder.

"Just go _get_ them Hank, seriously. It takes, what, like ten minutes to get to campus from here?"

"Five, I'd say," Charles says.

"Yes, _five_ if Charles is driving. That is, if you get there _at all_."

"What does _that _mean?" Hank asks, voice small.

Raven splays her hands on the countertop, eyes wide, as if she's about to convey to him some momentous piece of information. "It means that twenty-five is fifty-five, sixty-five is ninety and that the definition of _yield_ is _gun it and take your chances_."

"You jest," Charles quips, though he's smiling. "I'm an excellent driver."

"Just because you're still alive doesn't make you any good. Oh!" Raven whirls and beams up at Hank who, despite being seated, still manages to be an inch or two taller than everyone else in the room. He startles in his seat and spares a quick glance at Charles, whose mouth quirks and shoulders roll in such a way that says, _Get used to it, pal._ "This one time – "

"Oh God," Charles says, threading his fingers through his hair.

"_This one time_," Raven repeats. "We were going, well, _somewhere_, who cares. And it was one or two in the morning and Charles was going, like, a _hundred miles an hour_ on a forty-five – "

"I did no such thing," Charles protested weakly, though the fact that he had _actually_ been going ninety-eight probably wouldn't work in his favor. Raven just ignores him anyhow, eyes all alight at the prospect of his humiliation.

"And these cops pulled us over, right?" She pauses then, clearly for dramatic effect. "So Charles convinces them that they're _security_ _officers_ on the _Enterprise_." Hank gasps – much in the way, Charles imagines, that some children do when they learn that Santa Claus isn't real – while Raven chortles.

"I did feel awful about that," Charles says, idly twirling the hairs at the base of his skull around his fingertips. "I still do, as a matter of fact. Had to fetch the poor chaps from the jailhouse the next day. The sheriff thought they'd either gone mad or were playing _quite_ the practical joke."

Hank looks like he's waiting for permission to laugh. Or to cry. Either would do. "Is that _true_?"

"Very. I nearly killed them trying to set it all straight. My first attempt at widescale memory adjustment, so I suppose it wasn't a total misfortune."

"Don't look so surprised, Hank," Raven says, giving him another jab. "In his defense, this was before Charles discovered morality and became everyone's mother." She earns a glower from said hen for that, and retaliates with one of her many Faces. "_Anyways_, the moral of the story is…" She turns and rushes out the room, presumably to fetch something.

"Don't let Raven tell stories?" Hank suggests.

Charles laughs. "Yes, that would do."

She rushes back in, a pair of keys dangling from her forefinger. "…is that _I'm _driving."

"What?" Charles says. "Why?"

"This may very well be my one and only chance to escape this house today. Besides," she adds, sidling up next to Hank and leaning an elbow on his shoulder. Astonishingly enough, he doesn't blush, even lets his hand reach up to grasp hers for a moment, dropping it, though, when she adds. "Hank's awful too. _We_ were once pulled over for going twenty miles _under_ the speed limit on the freeway. Between Grandma here – " Hank crosses his arms over his chest, an honorable attempt at appearing indignant. " – and Evel Knievel – " Charles just shakes his head. " – we're either late or dead. So hurry up and get dressed already."

Charles and Hank are wise enough to comply without protest, and twenty minutes later they're filing out the door, the former of the two shouting cautionary words down the hall at Sean and Alex, who are still having a series of raucous conniptions in one of the first floor sitting rooms. "_Do_ try not to set anything on fire, boys."

He only receives muffled, _highly_ suspect laughter in reply. "What's that?" he says.

"Whatever you say, Prof," Alex answers.

Raven yanks Charles the rest of the way out the door before he has the chance to give an exhaustive lecture on respecting others' property and _yada yada, just get in the car Charles._ He does, his retort and his pride successfully swallowed, more than ready to lose himself in the toil of Hank's research, ready to the point of apprehension even. That Erik Lehnsherr's apartment skirts the edge of campus, that he may just as easily be wandering the halls of Carson Square as they will be, has nothing whatsoever to do with the rigidity of the muscles in the pit of his stomach.

_Nothing at all_, Charles thinks futilely, watching with a crooked frown as the countryside melds into townscape.

* * *

><p>"<em>Shit<em>."

The two graduate students who have been skirting the edge of the room near the doorway jump at the sound of Erik's voice. Presumably, they've been weighing the risks of occupying the same enclosed space as a very tall, very ambiguously-European, very _irate_ professor of something-they-don't-want-to-deal-with (considering the number of times he's shocked himself on his whatsit) against using one of the high-powered computers over in the corner. His uttered curse, guttural and eerily exotic, seems to tip the scales in favor of _getting the hell out of there_, and they scurry out, apparently having no time to waste.

Erik, for all his usual vigilance, hadn't even noticed they were there, his concentration split about sixty-forty between operating the generator on the table before him and disallowing himself any more thoughts of _no, he's not going to say his name, not even going to think it_. He's failing spectacularly at both, though, and he's tempted to call it all a loss and just _mull_ for the remainder of the afternoon, just roam the laboratories in a nigh on apoplectic self-scrutiny. The dean, however, a man who wears the same black suit day in and day out, and whose name seems impossible to remember (in fact, the majority of the student population, even the staff, refers to him as Dean Mibby, formerly Dean Mib, apparently in reference to some rubbish film about aliens and other such nonsense), had expressed concern regarding the practice, claiming that his agitated pacing was _unnerving_, that he had overheard students talking about how he's _scary as hell, man, no joke._

So he bolts his feet to the floor – not literally, of course, though _there's _an idea – and fixes an unwavering stare on the generator, his only hope for distraction, hand outstretched and tense with exertion as he sets it in motion. Any other day and he would be puzzling over the energy it requires to manipulate these tiny, exacting magnetic fields as opposed to the mere shake of his shoulders and set of his jaw that can derail trains and rattle girders and tear aircraft out of the sky (_not_ that he's done any of those things - _on purpose_). He would be scribbling furiously in some sort of arching, nonsensical, half-German, half-English, sometimes-a-little-French script about the Lorentz force and semiconductors and _what the hell does that even say, I don't remember writing that_.

But this is hardly any other day. In fact, the past week or so has consisted _entirely_ of non any-other-days. His usual wake-work-home-sleep routine (peppered with the occasional meal, a good half dozen cups of coffee and three, maybe four – okay, probably five, _so sue him_ – cigarettes) is permeated by a sense of loss, waning curiously as the sun rises – to be displaced by a whisper of an _echo_ of an ineffable sensation at the back of his mind – and then waxing as it sets. Not to mention that he's been having the strangest dreams – still nightmarish, of course, rampant with dread and noise and hissing shadows – set in overlarge homes instead of rain slick alleyways, reeking of cigar smoke and stale alcohol instead of sterilized syringes and day-old blood.

Erik suspects it wouldn't take a scientist to trace these peculiarities back to their origin, back to cold hands and a penetrating gaze, all juxtaposed with an unguarded expression and frustratingly boyish lips and ears and God _damn_ the day Charles Xavier caught him unawares in a room full of insufferable professors and pliable metal. Because he hardly recognizes himself, his mind absent from his body and his powers aching to just go completely _batshit_ on every magnetic structure that he happens by. And it's not long before he's tasting the bitter reminder of a lesson he had learned when he was a boy named Max, not yet a man called Erik, to _avoid when possible, survey when practical, confront when necessary_, the routine that's saved his life and his limbs a dozen times over.

But then he's openly rummaging through administrative files marked _Xavier, C. F., Professor: Genetics_ and prodding a few dumbstruck students for information and having lengthy arguments with his own subconscious about whether or not it's advisable to _just_ _talk to the man, already, for fuck's sake_. He's almost not surprised, though he's caught somewhere between embarrassment and self-loathing. But he just pretends at nonchalance and banishes himself to a basement laboratory, wherein every professor and student requiring some piece of equipment or something of the sort rues the day the Physics department thought the words and phrases _expansion_ and _foreign staff members_ and _magnetoresistance_ sounded awfully nice.

Which brings him back to the _sixty _part of that sixty-forty, the uncooperative generator (though now he's thinking it's more the other way around, maybe even a little bit thirty-seventy). As it is, he can hardly convince the coil to rotate properly and any electrical current that he manages to generate seems hellbent on arcing away from its source and giving him a good zap. Erik would have said _fuck this_ and crumpled the damnable little thing ages ago were it not for the…

_Not for the what?_ Erik thinks, frustration curling his fingers and very nearly rending the generator in two. In fact, about eight seconds later, when he's yanking his hand away with a hiss, it _does_ rend, only in four instead of two. _The audacity_, he thinks and _Christ_, now he's anthropomorphizing laboratory equipment.

"God_-fucking-_damnit," he says, because it feels good to curse out loud in empty rooms…

"Your _language_, Professor," a voice answers.

…_not_ so empty, then.

* * *

><p>Charles has enough foresight <em>not<em> to prod any further when, after kicking Hank and himself out on the curb next to the Square, Raven says something about _Hula Night_ and speeds off towards uptown.

"Hula _what_?" Hank asks.

"Ignorance is bliss, my friend," Charles answers, clapping him on the shoulder and steering him towards the entrance. He's about to open his mouth and add that Raven's been of legal drinking age since May (hence he'd be a terrible hypocrite if he nagged) when a distinctive pressure builds behind his eyes, vibrating just this side of pleasant. He's been certain to wax his telepathic barriers while on campus, considering the peculiar ease with which he can establish a connection with Dr. Lehnsherr. But occasionally the man seems to be doing mutant-power version of push-ups, and that _humming_ kicks back in.

"I need to get a few things from my office," Hank says as Charles reaches up to massage his temples. "Meet you in – "

Before Charles can censor himself, before he even has a thought to deny the impulse, he interrupts, "Room number eight?" just as his thoughts whisper, _Room number Erik_. He tries not to be amused by that.

"The basement?" Hank replies, because Charles has never been very fond of it, face contorting at the sight of blank, windowless walls and ears twitching at the stinging echo.

Charles nods, smiles, and lies. "Best to be out of sight."

"Right. Uh, I'll just be a minute, then."

Charles doesn't see Hank leave, is already turning the corner himself, allowing his feet to carry him down the stairs and along hallways he's only seen maybe twice before. He's always preferred the laboratories in the adjacent building, on the second floor, where he can peer out the windows and down on the cherry trees below. Such pleasant focal points – aforementioned cherry trees, his great grandfather's portrait hanging above the fireplace in his study, the forest landscape outside his bedroom window – are an absolute prerequisite to any sort of productivity whatsoever.

So when he's leaning in the doorway of room number eight (though with faded paint falling from the beveled plaque, _room_ _lower-case g_ would be more apt), he figures that it's only natural that his gaze lands on, and _lingers _on, the sharp, oblique planes of Erik Lehnsherr's upper back, shoulder blades salient beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, neck muscles taut with rage as he looms over his ruined little machine. Charles, before he can take to lurking inappropriately there in the entryway, straightens up and takes a deep breath, at which point Erik bites out a colorful expletive.

Charles' response is immediate, blithe, "Your _language_, Professor."

Erik turns and regards him with those eyes of his, shadowed and shimmering, his lazy brow portending a curious lack of surprise, though Charles feels a telltale, vicarious jolt in his sternum.

"Xavier," he greets.

"Lehnsherr," Charles mimics. And he ought to just _say_ it, just _tell_ him. But aside from his own reservations – concerns about Erik's lack of trust, his volatile temper, how renegade magnetic fields could ravage every electronic device in a five mile radius – he feels a caution not his own. A reluctance born of memories on which he can stake no legitimate claim.

So he just listens as Erik says, "Sorry about your generator." He gestures at the scrap on the table, which Charles takes as an invitation to enter the room, hands folded casually behind his back as he tries to pretend that he isn't acutely aware of every centimeter that diminishes between the two of them.

"Don't be," Charles says. "That certainly isn't mine."

"Isn't it?" Erik's tone is faintly accusatory, which earns him Charles' famous brow, what Raven calls his _wtf, man?_ arch that could make the President stutter. Erik, however, just throws it right back and adds, "I hear you own the university."

_Snooping little devil_, Charles thinks. "Hearsay, actually. My great grandfather _founded_ the university. I, in turn, _invest _in it."

"You wish you did, though." It's a statement, not a question, and Charles wonders at Erik's presumption, whether or not he should find it amusing, charming even. "Own it, I mean."

"And preside over that squabbling Board of Directors? I think not."

"Are you sure? You seem like the presiding type."

Charles' eyes narrow. "You mean _bossy_."

"In a manner of speaking."

Charles may have to strain his ears, but he can hear the coltishness in the man's voice, lifting his pitch where it would usually fall. He realizes that they're _playing_, that they've skipped the acquaintance stage and become…something else entirely. Yet his mind still stays his tongue from revealing his secrets, his mutation, his plans…_curious_, he thinks, but he hearkens to the warning anyhow.

"What's happened, then?" Charles says, reaching out to give the shorn coil a gentle tap.

Erik shrugs. "Accident."

"Hm. Hate it when that happens."

"You hate it when it you accidentally tear generators to pieces?"

Charles smiles. "You mock me, sir."

Erik looks ready to retort when Hank, laden with books and papers and some sort of object that looks more or less like an electronic lollipop (which, by the look of some of the highly suspect liquid sloshing around in a few of the components, would require the intervention of Poison Control should anyone be daft enough to give it a taste), stumbles through the door. He drops the load rather brusquely on a bench in the corner, and then turns to deliver yet another of his breathless orations when he catches sight of Erik, which seems to glue his bottom lip to his top.

"McCoy," Erik says, and Charles notes that the way he greets his colleagues as if he's James Bond _probably_ has something to do with the way everyone eyes him as if he's walking around with a poorly concealed, loaded pistol and a short fuse.

Hank just nods, and then looks at Charles, wide-eyed. _Professor…?_

_It's alright, Hank. Just don't mention anything regarding mutation._

Hank looks at him curiously, askance, before giving him a _whatever-you-say_ nod and snatching up a horrendously marked and stained set of plans that seem to involve merging more of those fishy little ball-on-a-stick things with a pasta strainer encased in wax.

"I'm, uh, going to call it Cerebro," Hanks says, wringing the corners of the prints with nervous enthusiasm. "It means _brain_. In _Spanish_."

Sometimes it's easy to forget that Hank is only twenty-two years old. Sometimes not. Charles just smiles indulgently as he tries to ignore the I'm-going-to-shoot-myself vibes coming from Erik's side of the table as he carefully extricates the papers from Hank's fingers before they're maimed beyond any use. "So this is the amplifier, then?"

"Yes," Hank says, his restless fingertips now causing irreversible damage to the hem of his shirt. And Charles doesn't need telepathy to know that at least one of the stains on the plans are from some outrageously potent brew of coffee (_must have detoured at the lounge on the way down_, Charles thinks), particularly when he opens his mouth and repeats, "_Yes_. You see, I have this cap _here_ – " Hank points at the strainer-thing. " – and these amplifiers _here_ – " He nabs the little lollipop and wiggles it around. " – which combine to both concentrate _and_ stabilize your, uh, your _brainwaves_, considering the problems we've had with, uh, _ranged_…stuff. But I was having trouble identifying a specific _marker_ for, uh, _certain things_ and then I thought you might like to…to see the _progress_.But then I need some measurements of your – " He gestures wildly around his head. " – and I know how you are about your – " He tugs at his own rather disheveled mop of hair. " – so I thought I'd bring this – "

"_Hank_," Charles interrupts. Because it's become _quite _clear that 1) Erik is going to murder someone and 2) Hank is bloody _awful_ at speaking in code. "Why don't we continue this conversation in my office."

"Uh, alright. I'll just – " Hank seems more than happy to comply, grabbing a backpack he most likely left the last time he was here (he's what Raven likes to call a notorious thing-leaver, dropping seemingly random items all over the place until they're forced to conduct city-wide scavenger hunts) and sweeping everything on the bench into the torn, zipper-less opening.

"I'll be along in a moment," Charles says while Hank skirts along the wall and out the door, giving little more than a _hm_ as a reply as he disappears.

"How you are about your what?"

Charles turns to find Erik a step or two closer than he had been before, and he has to crane his neck a bit to meet his eyes. "Pardon?"

"The McCoy kid says he knows how you are about your – " Erik imitates Hank's gesturing, which looks particularly droll coming from him.

Charles laughs. "Oh. My sister's been telling him that I have some sort of complex about my hair."

"Do you?"

Normally, Charles would argue to the ends of the Earth that _no_, just because he only allows it to be cut every six months by a very specific, kindly, elderly woman a few miles north of D.C. – she's a friend of the family, so he insists that it's an obligation – doesn't mean he has some sort of _disorder_. But Erik's eyes are so _bright_ and his brow is so _precise_ and Charles has never wanted anyone's trust more than he wants this man's.

So he says, "Yes, actually." Erik smiles, lips curling up and back and _gracious_, was Alex right. The man is all teeth. "But you must swear never to tell. That's sensitive information."

"Consider me sworn," Erik says, and his smile vanishes, his expression abruptly dour, as if he has just promised to take any bullets that might come their way.

Charles, of course, is sorely tempted to peek into his mind, to discover the origin of the sudden gravity. But he thinks the nature of their first meeting to be violation enough, and so grits his teeth and bids Erik a polite farewell instead, despite the urge to stay, to allow Hank to wait and Raven to worry as he spends the rest of the day, the rest of the _weekend_ – the _rest of his_ _life_, his mind suggests – picking away at Erik's brain.

_May just be imagining things_, Charles admits as he steps reluctantly out the door. But then he hears a heavy footfall from behind, and looks over his shoulder to find Erik standing tall in the doorway, elegant and faintly leonine, wearing some sort of look that he's hard pressed to define.

"Charles," he says.

"Yes?"

Erik shrugs. "Nothing. Just…" He shrugs again and Charles realizes that this is the first time Erik has called him by his first name, that he had referred to Hank only as McCoy, that Alex complains about how creepy it is to be shouted at by his last name as if he's just joined some branch of the military. _Permission_, Charles thinks. He's asking for _permission_ to call him _Charles_, of all things, as if his given name is something sacred, as if _everyone's _is.

So he nods. "Erik," he answers.

And Erik straightens as understanding passes between them. "Goodbye, Charles."

"Goodbye, Erik."

* * *

><p>Erik watches as Charles disappears up the stairs, wondering what it is about the man that demands such blind trust. Anyone with such an air is usually affecting it. But there's sincerity written in the way that he smiles and walks and talks and Erik thinks <em>what a fool<em>, though whether that thought's directed at Charles or at himself remains to be seen.

Because that _itch_ is still taking refuge in his mind and every mental faculty he's ever managed to acquire over the years is pointing an accusatory finger at Professor Charles Xavier. And yet he smiles at him, banters, reaches out as if every other man he had deigned to trust in the past hadn't stolen his right to naiveté and shattered his illusions of dignity.

Yet…

_Yet what?_ Erik thinks. And he doesn't have an answer to that, figures he never will, figures he'll regret this entire day, this week, this _year_ even. As long as he doesn't have to hear the intolerable Dr. McCoy sputter out the word 'uh' in the next twenty-four hours, though, it's a bet that, _remarkably _enough, he's willing to make.

* * *

><p>Reviews are appreciated. Have a nice daynight and happy reading, writing and all that.


	5. The Tempter's Work

A/N: Hey guys! Sorry it's been a while. I randomly wrote that oneshot I posted however long ago. Then I worked on some original stuff and then I got an LJ account (username in my profile, if you guys hang out over there) and confused myself.

Anyways, a bottomless barrel of thanks to reviewers and favoriters and alerters. You and your s'mores keep me chugging along!

Also, a note: we are approaching the point in the story where the plot begins to pick up in pace. I am attempting a fairly narrow POV, wherein things are revealed slowly, only as they occur to the characters for the most part, so at least _some _confusion and lolwut moments are to be expected, as this is kind of a mystery story as well. Furthermore, I've played around with the characters' backstory, especially Erik's (sort of a thought experiment, as I believe only a fairly drastic change in his past would have turned his attention from pure vengeance to a life in academia). If you have questions or suggestions, though, fire away!

Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men universe or any of the characters therein. I'm just borrowing them.

Warnings: Language, purchase and consumption of alcohol. Also, I was medicated when I finished this up and read through it to look for mistakes and when I wrote all this rambling stuff up here before the story starts. Hopefully, that's not _too_ evident.

* * *

><p><em>There fiery seeds of anger lurk,<br>Which often hurt my frame;  
>And wait but for the tempter's work,<br>To fan them to a flame._

William Cowper

* * *

><p>"Charles is home!"<p>

Suspicion. Immediately. Because – not as a rule, but more or less a precedent – Raven doesn't make a habit of announcing Charles' arrival with such enthusiasm, instead preferring to mutter a wounded '…_hey'_ whilst pretending that there aren't some thirty-odd other rooms in the house to which she can retreat and ignore his so-called _buzz-killing aura_.

Yet here she comes, flitting down the hall, a genuine smile carving charming little dimples just below the jut of her cheekbones. Just as Charles had taught her all those years ago, she approaches the new arrivals – himself and Moira – in disguise, likely having shifted at the sound of the front door, to which her ears have been sharply attuned for over a decade and a half. Hank is not far behind. He's far less chipper, hands bunched up in his pockets, eyes faintly sunken, hair and clothing rumpled. He stifles a yawn as the lot of them percolate into the kitchen.

"Hey Moira," Raven says, though she barely spares her a glance, gaze instead fixated on the bag resting on Charles' hip. Before Moira can even open her mouth to reply, Raven adds, "So, Charles. _Oreos_."

"Oh," Charles says, partly out of realization, partly out of relief. He had assumed Raven's greeting had been some sort of code for _oh crap Charles is here, hide the broken invaluable heirloom_ and that he would be forced to 'convince' his insurance company of his right to a payout for the fourth time that year. But he notes that neither Sean nor Alex are anywhere to be seen, that it's Wednesday evening and that Raven is leaning over the countertop with moderate – soon to be _im_moderate if the flare of her nostrils is anything to go by – impatience unsettling her demeanor, making her appear as if she's dancing in place.

"Oreos?" Moira says as Charles reaches into the bag still slung over his shoulder. He slides it across the counter and Raven catches it with a flourish, making a show of giving it fastidious inspection (_better be Double Stuf, Charles, I swear to God_) before flashing a brilliant smile, made even more brilliant as, in her satisfaction, she shifts back to her natural form.

Charles casts a sidelong glance at Moira, who isn't accustomed to the casual manner in which his many in-and-out residents brandish their mutations. To her credit, she doesn't even blink.

"We were _out_," Raven says. "And _I'm _out of Oreo pocket change." _Oreo pocket change_, she says, as if that's a _thing_, and Hank seems to be deliberately looking at a moving point on the wall, a burgeoning smile pinched between lip and bottom teeth. "Luckily, Charles has, like, I don't know, twelve _thousand_ dollars of roll-over cash from his dining card that he never uses."

"Luckily," Charles says waggishly. A beat, and then he admits, "You know, when I walked in, I was certain something had been wrecked."

"We were _out_," Raven repeats. "Of _Oreos_." As if that warrants a reaction of the same scale. "How can you have _Oreo night_ without _Oreos_, Charles?"

Charles laughs. "How, indeed?"

"Oreo night?" Moira says, and she tries to pretend that she hasn't interjected _yet again_ on behalf of her sanity and the slow-growing anticipation on Hank's face and a whole lot of other things that would probably make an excellent case as to why she should have doffed this entanglement with Charles Xavier ages ago.

"Yep. Eat bunches of cookies, watch gratuitously violent TV shows – " She whirls on Hank, who appears to be far too tired and ragged to startle, as he usually would. "Speaking of."

Hank pulls his left hand out of his pocket and squints down at his watch. "Three minutes."

"Crap!" Raven all but pushes Charles out of the way on her circuit about the counter and over to the refrigerator, snatching an entire carton of milk and two glasses (_Not __**glass**__ glass, Raven, _Charles thinks at her with an affected scowl._ Gracious, be sensible._) before herding Hank out the door with her elbow.

"Without so much as a goodbye," Moira says, though the words barely make it past her tongue before Raven pops a head in the doorway.

"Wait," she says, brow wrinkled, curious, shooting a hard glance at Moira and then another at Charles. "What are _you_ guys doing?"

Charles tries to keep the portent out of his voice. "We have some things we need to discuss. I'll be in the library next door if you need me."

"Whatever," Raven says, clearly too concerned about her and Hank's night of chocolate and viewer-discretion-advised television to discern the meaning behind _some things_,and she pops back out.

Moira watches her go with a small smile, one which she suspects would be a mirror image of Charles' were he not standing on his toes, biting his bottom lip as he reaches for a couple of coffee mugs (_tea cups_, he would be adamant to argue) hidden away on the top shelf of one of the many cupboards. She would offer to help – she _is _an inch or two taller than him, after all – but he would be wounded at the suggestion. So she contents herself with watching and, as she does, is once more caught by the sheer outlandishness of the entire situation. She is, for all intents and purposes, _crashing_ at the house of one of her staff members. Which wouldn't be near as odd if one her thousands of students didn't take up residence there as well. And if said student weren't romantically involved with yet _another _of her staff members. _And _if two _additional_ students weren't former residents and current weekend interlopers.

"_And_ if we didn't each have superhuman abilities," Charles says as he tosses a rather absurd amount of some – _probably ridiculously expensive_ – brand of coffee into a coffeemaker by the sink.

"_Out_ of my head, Charles," Moira says. "And I hope you're not expecting me to drink that."

Charles shrugs. "It's _decaffeinated_," he insists, as if that will make it taste any less like tar once the water's managed its way through his little mountain of fine grounds. Then he makes his way over to the entryway, hands folded neatly behind his back like the proper Englishman that he is. He gestures towards the hall with an upset in the bearing of his shoulders. "While we wait?"

Moira can very nearly feel the anticipation coiling at the base of Charles' neck, no doubt owing to the ominous phraseology that she had employed earlier that day (_Charles, we need to talk_). But still, it's quite sudden and somewhat perturbing, and she wonders if he's not projecting his concern, if _she's_ not projecting _her_ concern, if they're not caught in a rather unpleasant positive feedback sort of a situation, the likes of which had had the both of them _prematurely sloshed_ – Charles' words, not hers – many a time in years past. She's not entirely certain as to why – hasn't the faintest idea, in fact – considering they've dwelled on just about every grim, dreadful, poignant, alarming, the-list-goes-on topic known to man. Yet, as she clutches this morning's paper, atrociously crumpled and ludicrously re-folded (_damn things are impossible to put back together_, she thinks), to her chest, she can feel her spine stiffen and her lips curl back between her teeth, as if she's guarding a precious secret. And as if said secret is in danger. _Could _ever be in danger. Here. With_ Charles_.

"Moira?" Charles says, appraising her with his left brow drawn upwards, doubtless having caught the tail end of her wayward thoughts. Or at least, so she believes. "Are you coming?"

She's reluctant to go, and so notes the presence of _two _mugs adjacent to the coffeemaker with a somewhat feigned curiosity. "Aren't you going to have some tea?"

Charles sighs. "I've been tricked into sampling this particular brand of coffee." That Charles can be _tricked_ into anything is laughable, and he offers a smile in response to Moira's half-hearted snickering, though he doesn't seem inclined to share the story behind what she expects is an embarrassing defeat on his part and a rather miraculous triumph on Raven's. "Better to get it over with now than suffer a much more severe, much more _public_ indignity later on."

"I suppose..."

She's about to demand that he _elaborate, Charles, whether you like it or not_ when she feels a presence in her mind, not unlike the brief thoughts which drift in and out when Charles is feeling much too lackadaisical to actually open his mouth. But this is more enduring, as if someone has made an incision in her subconscious and poured in a warm, nearly pleasant (_a little _too _pleasant_), just-this-side-of viscous semi-liquid to take the place of the usual gestalt of _soundsimageswords_. She's not sure if she's being searched or calmed or considered (_or controlled_, though she dismisses the thought even before she thinks it, if that's possible) or _what_. And it makes her squirm. Just a little bit. Guiltily, yes (_I trust you, Charles_, she can her herself saying), but she still shifts in her seat. As soon as the discomfort that's pulling at the muscles and nerves in her legs registers on her face, however, the presence withdraws, along with Charles, who just drifts out the door with an expectant look cast over his shoulder.

_Telepaths_, she thinks. Not unkindly, but not quite _adoringly_ either, and she follows.

Charles, meanwhile, attempts to stifle the reach of his mind as he treks the arc from the kitchen to the library. Normally, it isn't quite so difficult. In fact, he wouldn't call it _any_ brand of difficult, just the sort of mental discipline that it takes your average fellow to keep from gross obscenities in public (though he's _more _than aware that there's _quite _the handful of men and women to whom this analogy would not apply). But her subconscious reeks of _secrets_, of the ilk that lock themselves away in a flurry of suspicion and self-preservation. And it's a reflex, to reach out and snatch them up the way one might reach for something that's fallen out of place.

_Or maybe_, he thinks, as he strides into the library, setting his bag in a heap on the desk, and then settling into an armchair by the fireplace. Maybe he's just been acting a bit cavalier as of late, considering the ease with which Erik's (_Erik…_he lingers on the name, turning it over slowly, relishing the way the soft vowels meld into a harsh consonant) mind seems to reach right back. Making him greedy. Making him _selfish_. And unforgivably so.

"You've read yesterday's student paper?" Moira says from behind, still shuffling through the doorway. It's just barely a question, more an assumption, because Charles has delighted in reading The Cowper Student every Tuesday and Friday. Not only because he can be rather a creature of habit, but also because – and maybe _five _people are aware of this – he and Raven (and maybe Sean and Alex will join in too, if they aren't the subject themselves) have been giggling over the weekly campus police report since before either of them attended.

_But_. He'd met Erik. Then a whole lot of things started throwing themselves out the window. Among a sense of productivity, of autonomy even, the _newspaper_ seemed the least critical.

So Charles just says, "No. I haven't quite gotten around to that yet."

"Oh." There's a faint note of surprise in Moira's voice as she takes the seat next to Charles', angled towards his, he imagines, for just this sort of occasion. "Well, then you haven't heard?"

Charles sits up a little straighter. "About what?"

She pulls the newspaper away from her chest and tosses it on Charles' lap. "Front page," she says, apparently not so keen on just telling him herself.

Charles regards her with an expression made half of concern and half of watered down amusement as he makes sense of the crumpled remnant of a paper. Any suggestion of a smile on his lips vanishes, though, as he reads. "Dr. Hendry's _died_?" Moira nods. Charles catches her eyes, flashing bright in the dim lamplight. There's an obligatory bit of sympathy there, but a brief whisper – _chubby old cad_ – flickers in the silence. Charles, at the risk of seeming crass, quells a smile. "_Well. _How?"

"Aneurism, they're saying. They're not certain, though."

"Aneurism," Charles repeats, skeptical. He's certainly no medical doctor, but from what he understands – "That's usually evident."

"Not the point, Charles."

"Right. I suppose we'll have to set up a service of some sort, then."

Moira sighs. "_Also_ not the point. God, Charles, keep _reading_."

Charles throws up a hand in mock surrender as he flips the paper over. He's about halfway through some glib paragraph about the _collective sorrow of both students and staff at Cowper University_ when a name catches his eye, pulling it as a magnet, blurring his focus for a moment as he scans black bold against gray: **Sebastian Shaw**.

He's on his feet before he even realizes it, pacing around behind his chair, then behind Moira's chair, then by the desk, then back again, his steps short and mechanical.

"Charles?" Moira says, watching him worriedly.

"Shaw," he whispers, but it catches in his throat, sounding something more like a half-strangled hiccup. His head feels light, airy, as he extends the reach of his mind on instinct (_whose instinct?_), probing every nook and cranny of the house, of the property, of the street around and behind, the homes nearby, shuffling rather violently through every foreign consciousness that he comes across. And even as he does it, even as the latterly familiar shadow – the _shadow_, he realizes, that's been burgeoning since he began reclining willingly into the mind and mannerisms of Erik Lehnsherr – begins to overtake, his own sensibilities protest, so used to lengthy consideration and well-chewed logic, so _very_ unaccustomed to gut reactions.

But he sees _Shaw_, he thinks _Schmidt_, and the two names of one sadistic man reverberate back and forth between the two psyches of one overwrought mind (_Charles' mind, _my_ mind_, he stresses) – on the one hand, it's the blood-black lullaby that chants him (_chants Erik_, _chants _Erik) to sleep; on the other, it's little more than a faint note of recognition, a droning tune he just barely recognizes.

And as that dividing line that he'd constructed as early as age twelve to keep _Charles_ separate from _Everyone Else_ blurs, memories he _thought_ he'd sorted out well enough earlier this week to begin leak in, like an old, fuzzy picture show, jolting from frame to frame: _a man – his name is Nacht – in a laboratory, a long white coat, a whiter, sinister smile; Nacht, leaning over him, syringe in hand, clear liquid belying its own malignity; Nacht in the doorway, imposing figure casting a yards long shadow across the immaculate, near-crystalline floor; Nacht lying on the – _

"_Charles_." Moira's hand, fingers long and cold and delicate, are curled around his wrist. Then _two _snaps back into _one_, and he's staring into narrowed pools of amber.

"Schmidt," he says, though he meant to say _Sorry_.

"Exactly." Her concern dissolves, displaced by – _false_ – understanding. Still, she points to the chair next to her, a little bewildered if nothing else. "Why don't you sit back _down_."

He nods, and then complies, the paper still held tight in his grip. "So _this_ is what you've been so agitated about all afternoon."

"_Yes. _Charles," she says, and she leans forward, pointing at the little grayscale photograph at the bottom right corner of the page. Her voice drops, hanging just above a whisper. "You remember this guy." He does. _Oh_, how he does. "He was all over the news just, _what_, two years ago? Suspicion for war crimes and kidnapping and _murder_ and just about every other felony. Not to mention he supposedly had some sort of connection with that Dr. Schmidt, the one with all the – " She pauses, expression vacant as she recalls something truly harrowing, and Charles doesn't bother telling her that her so-called _connection_ is likely much closer than she thinks. It wouldn't do any good anyway. " – all the _experiments_.And now he's – _Charles_, now he's a board member at _my _university. _Your _university. _How_?"

She snatches the newspaper out of his hands and folds it once more. She hands it back and points to a little block of text, tiny and italicized beneath another photograph of Shaw himself, his smile affected and smeared with hauteur, his arms curled around a severely beautiful woman in all white. "Dr. and Mrs. Sebastian Shaw," he reads aloud. "…inducted at…at a _request_, and at the pleasure of the current Board…at _whose_ request?"

"That's just it. I have _no _idea. I wasn't even aware that Dr. Hendry had passed away until yesterday morning."

Charles tosses the paper on the lamp table to his left, then turns an incredulous stare on Moira, who's looking _struck_, to say the least. "You're joking."

"Nope," she answers, unnecessarily. "I know that this is my first year in this position, Charles, and I never paid much attention to the Board beforehand. But I'm _pretty _sure this isn't how it works."

"Not at all." He looks reflexively over at an old photograph on the mantel, of himself, not but five or six years old, wearing absurdly dapper clothes and clutching at his father's hand as they grin into the camera lens. "Before my father died, the vice chair – I can't even remember the old man's name now – ran off with his maid or something. The Alumni Association made recommendations for replacements and the Board cast their ballots. There are no _requests_."

"They seem to think there are. And Charles." She leans forward again, and it seems the blood drains from her face as she speaks, voice a whisper, _barely_ a whisper in fact, more like powerless breaths of air pretending at being spoken language. He has to turn his head to catch her words. "My secretary. She's convinced Shaw's been chair of the Board for _years_."

The word _years_ takes a few moments to settle. When it does, Charles goes rigid. "_Sorry?_"

Moira just stares. After all, Charles has been acutely aware of – and acutely interested in, for that matter – the existence and the exploits of fellow telepaths for years now. He recognizes a botched memory fix when he sees one. He's been on the guilty end of a handful of those himself. And Moira's no stranger to these sorts of things either. Sheought to have known, ought to have descried this _sooner_…but then, as he peers into her eyes, into her mind, just at the churning surface, he can see that –

"You _knew_," he murmurs."Why did you wait so long to tell me?"

"I don't know. I just…_couldn't_."

Charles turns and rises to his feet once more, though the motion is slow, deliberate. "I just _couldn't_," he echoes, as he crosses the distance to the fireplace in three long strides, leaning his elbow against the mantel as he gazes sightless into the flames. They're dwindling, but even so, they cast a pleasant heat up his chest and down his thighs, soothing enough to set all the diverging tracks of his mind side by side where, in relief, he can consider each of them with a measure of balance.

_I just __**couldn't**__,_ he thinks. _Someone_ has placed blocks in Moira's mind. Or attempted to do so, at least, as said blocks seem to have both a range and an expiration date. Whoever's responsible is either powerful and sloppy or ambitious and inexperienced. He's hoping it's the latter.

Actually, as long as he's hoping for things, he may as well wish that it's neither, that Moira's just _highly_ reluctant to tell him the truth. But he can feel the masses in her mind, dead weights trying to drag anything attached to the name _Shaw_ or _Schmidt_ out of her reach. Luckily, Moira knows a thing or two about telepaths, and she has a clever mind to boot.

"Something's going on here, Charles."

He turns, warmth now sprawling up his back. Moira gestures widely, vaguely. "_Here_," she says. Then she touches a finger to her temple. "And _here_. What if – "

"No," Charles interrupts, gently. "There's no use speculating. We'll just have to wait until tomorrow."

"And do what? _Clearly _this guy is more than I can handle. Maybe even more than _you _can handle."

The frankly smug part of himself wants to say, _I doubt that_. But aside from broken sort-of-quasi-memories (_whatever that means_, he thinks derisively) and a singular instance of probable mind-finagling, he knows very little about this Sebastian Shaw, this Klaus Schmidt – his motives, his companions (whoever they may be), his capabilities.

"We'll see what we can find out," he says. And he knows that the suggestion is terribly weak, terribly noncommittal. Not that he isn't concerned – he is, gravely so, as a matter of fact. But he's reluctant to reveal anything of Erik Lehnsherr, and whatever else he could offer would feel like betrayal. _Madness_, he thinks. _But there you have it_.

Naturally, Moira is displeased with the ambiguity of his reply. "So. Logic now, freak-out later?"

He shakes his head, and offers the first thing that comes to mind. "Logic now, secretive file-pilfering later."

Moira just frowns as she sinks down into her seat, watching the fireplace as the flames flicker, as they die away. They remain like that for a long while, she resisting the urge to chew on her nails as she mulls and Charles trying not to _descend_ into Erik's memories as he has before, instead attempting to hold them in place, where he can consider this Shaw and this Schmidt and this Nacht.

Nacht, though, the latter of the three, his name, his face, his slithering voice, all eating away at his resolve…

"Coffee," Moira says suddenly.

Charles starts. "What?"

"We were going to have some coffee."

"Oh." Charles' face screws up in mild disgust. He's a little shaken, a lot exhausted, and the _last_ thing he wants is to choke down some awful, bitter liquid. So he pushes himself away from the fireplace and offers Moira his hand. "I've lost the will. To bed, instead?"

She accepts his hand with pursed lips. For a moment, he thinks that she's going to protest, that she's going to insist they just _do _something already, something _now _before she loses her wits. She was always a doer, even if her _doing_ accomplished nothing whatsoever. But she sighs and says, "As if you ever had it."

Charles just smiles wanly as he leads her out the door, along the hall, up the stairs and towards a cluster of bedrooms at the western end of the house, anxious to be rid of this conversation. He pauses in front of his own bedroom. "I know it's been a while, but you've been here before. So just take your pick."

Moira looks around, frowning. "What about Raven?"

Charles shrugs, lets out an errant breath. "Oh, she hasn't slept up here in ages. Prefers the _couches_, apparently."

"Hm." She takes a step forward. Then another, looking slowly about the hallway, pretending at taking her time to choose. Charles has been a friend to Moira, and she to him, for quite some time. He knows that she couldn't care _any_ less as to where she sleeps. In fact, she probably would've settled for the chair in the library, cramped in an impossible little human ball next to the lukewarm fireplace.

_She's stalling_, Charles thinks, watching as a series of bleak worst case scenarios filter through her mind, blanketed in overtones of fear, of worry, a whole melting pot of dreary thoughts and feelings that sets his head pounding. Not that it hadn't been aching before. He places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes gently. "Don't be afraid," he says. "I can shield your mind."

Despite the comforting gesture, the soothing words – maybe even a little bit _because _of them, discouraged as he is from reading her thoughts – Moira is still scowling. "And the kids?"

"Don't be absurd." Charles reaches up and presses his index and middle finger to his temple, a habit he had adopted as a child when he had first started experimenting with his telepathy. "I've been keeping an eye on them for years. _Decades_ in Raven's case. Shielding them, watching them, forging connections that should warn me if anything goes…" He shrugs his left shoulder.

"To hell?"

"Awry."

"You can do that?"

_And so much more_, Charles thinks. "Yes. I've told you this before."

"Not in so many words." Moira looks a watered-down brand of cagey as she tries to hide a yawn behind the palm of her hand, peering over at him with somnolent moisture gathering in her eyes. Charles can't imagine how difficult it must be to trust him, or any telepath for that matter, no matter how many years he's spent proving his integrity. He can slip up, slip _in_, hear things he shouldn't, see things that were never meant for him.

"Just go to bed," he says, steering her off towards the room cattycorner to his. "It's much easier to tear down any…" He searches for a delicate phrasing. "…foreign obstructions when the person in question is asleep. The mind offers less…" _Resistance_, he's about to say, but doesn't _that_ just sound ghastly? "…it's much more open, pliant."

Moira complies, and without protest, though Charles can tell she has loads more to say, to ask, can feel the words burning behind her lips. The both of them are half-in, half-out of their respective rooms, though, before she works up the nerve to speak, to say what she's likely been aching to say for months.

"Charles?"

He doesn't turn, just watches a fixed point on the ceiling. "Yes?"

"Sometimes…" She clears her throat. "Sometimes I think it would be best if the government would just come clean with the public about mutants. These so-called _paranormal sightings_, the conspiracies…they aren't enough to discourage the dangerous ones, Charles. Like this telepath or whatever he is."

Charles turns his head, regarding her from the corner of his eye. He wets his lips with the tip of his tongue, preparing to say..._something_. He's not sure what. Maybe it's best that Moira beats him to it.

"I know," she says. "It would probably be devastating. For the kids. For you. Maybe…" She sighs and shakes her head. "You know, forget I said anything. Goodnight, Charles."

She slips the rest of the way through the door, shutting it behind her with a gentle _click_ before he has a chance to reply.

"Goodnight," he whispers, needless as it is. Then he retreats into his own room, anticipating yet another night of fitful sleep – the kind rife with eerie phantasms and so-horrendous-it's-almost-funny situations – once he trudges his way through his housemates' minds, throwing up the sort of barricades that hover at the horizon of his own consciousness day in and day out. He figures that this is to be his fate for the next _several _nights, in all actuality, concerns of the day bleeding into these newfangled horrors of the night.

And then, eight hours, twelve minutes and, say, about eight seconds later, when the sun is just beginning to consider its trajectory along the sky, and Charles is looking into Erik's Lehnsherr's depthless eyes – and Erik's looking right back, shadows and firelight playing a game of back-and-forth beneath his hairline and around his lips – as they stand yards apart in a congested alleyway, he's almost glad that he was wrong.

* * *

><p>Erik thinks he probably looks pretty fucking ridiculous right now.<p>

If it isn't the old, baggy tweed jacket hanging at a slightly awkward angle off his shoulders and the too-wide sunglasses perched atop the bridge of his nose at two o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday (_make that a Thursday_, he thinks), then it might just be the cap on his head. It's sporting some poorly woven Russian letters, some of which are barely hanging on by a bundle of threads. And everyone probably thinks it means 'I'm about to maim you', considering the ten-foot-radius-personal-bubble-I'm-not-kidding expression that's sharpening his already knife-edged features.

But it works well enough as a disguise. _Disguise_, yes, because students here in America seem to have an uncanny ability to recognize him on the street. Not only that, but they beleaguer him like it's his bonus office hours or something. Maybe they haven't caught on to his purposefully stony demeanor yet, or maybe it's some sort of cultural difference that he doesn't care much to explore.

Either way, it doesn't much concern him at the moment. What _does_ concern him is the news regarding the recent addition - or _replacement_, apparently – to the CU Board of Directors. The moment still stands fresh in his mind, as if he's discovering it anew every second that ticks by – that moment when he had unrolled the paper, had given it a good _thwack _against his kitchen table to loosen it up, and then had looked down to see a name and a face that had lived dormant in his subconscious for years. And oddly enough, _concern_ may be too weighty of a word. Maybe this is what psychiatrists call 'dissociation'. Or maybe he's run out of vengeance, still haunted by the blood on his hands, a stain garnered when he was just a boy of fourteen.

_Of_ _**fourteen**_, he thinks, taking off his cap for a moment to scrub a hand through his hair.

When he had discovered that his mother's death and his father's suicide may not have been quite as accidental – in the case of the former – or intentional – in the case of the latter – as he had thought.

When, in the throes of an unprecedented rage, he had taken the life of a physician called Nacht, his temporary guardian, a man whose sadistic nature had unfolded crease by agonizing crease.

When, hours later, as the gravity of his actions began to sink into his shoulders, he had been faced with _running _or _fighting_, a choice between escaping to attempt to find some sense of normalcy and sinking his teeth into Nacht's blood trail, following it up to a man that the physician had referred to only as Herr Doktor. A man he learned carries several names – Klaus Schmidt chief among them, and with a possible connection to this Sebastian Shaw, an object of international investigation just two years ago.

Yet now he's chief of the board, for fuck's sake, and he ought to have at least _some_ measure of response, something that stirs echoes in his mind, his heart. (Of course, that the _university _should have some sort of response to being affiliated with an acquitted murderer, well, that goes without saying.)But the connection, the link between _Herr Doktor_ and _Shaw_ are weak at best. At least practically speaking. And he'd left that part of his life behind ages ago, _goddammit_, even if he hadn't wanted to, plagued by some of his father's last words – _become more than what's expected of you, Max_.

So he's stuck. Stuck between rage and pain, and ill-timed nostalgia. And apparently, _ironically_, the space between the two contains…_nothing_. Apathy.

Thus, he needs alcohol. _Needs_ alcohol. Preferably vodka. Hence the trip next door, which takes him down the stairs, up the alley and around the corner, then down the street past an empty lot to a little mom and pop liquor store that he's been frequenting for the past few weeks now. All of this in his little outfit. Which, in hindsight, is rather superfluous. Aside from a couple of boys arguing about the merits of their beer of choice in the corner of the shop, he hasn't come across a single soul.

Eerie.

"Mr. Lehnsherr," the shopkeeper greets, an elderly man whose voice sounds like rusty old blades dragged over gravel. "Vodka, then?"

Erik thinks maybe it's not such a great sign that he's both recognized and pegged for taste at a liquor store he's discovered only a handful of weeks prior. "Yes. Please."

"We have a new Latvian, if you'd like."

_Whatever_. "That'll be fine."

The man – and maybe he ought to know _his _name by now at least – shuffles towards the back while Erik waits, leaning against the counter, anxiously awaiting another alcohol-induced stupor, because then at least his dispassion will have a cause.

"Dude," a voice says from behind, _gratingly _loud in this literal dead of night. "Isn't that your Professor?"

_Son of a bitch_. He tosses a glower over his shoulder, one which, he realizes seconds later, likely lost its effectiveness behind his dark glasses. He yanks them off and shoves them down his jacket pocket.

"Ah," he says, appraising the two boys – one a student of his, another, curiously the one who had recognized him, a wild-haired ginger he hasn't met before – with a dark, critical eye. "Mr. Summers." Alex looks up at him, a note of grudging respect in the way he nods a wordless reply.

"Cassidy," the other boy offers, grinning cheekily as he shuffles a twelve pack from one arm to the other. "Sean."

"Lehnsherr," Erik says.

"Yeah, I know. You're Alex's physics professor, huh? That's crazy."

What, _exactly_, is crazy about this, Erik doesn't much care to find out. So he remains still and silent, watching them stolidly. And while Alex has enough sense to look sheepish, this Cassidy kid doesn't seem to catch on. Either that or he just doesn't care.

"Fucking creepy, huh?" Sean says, looking over his shoulder out the door. "There's, like, _nobody here_."

"My thoughts exactly." The shopkeeper emerges from the back, carrying a fairly expensive bottle of vodka and setting it gingerly on the counter. "Kids usually flooding the place this time of night."

"Yo, Murphy. What's up?"

Murphy – _that's his name_, Erik thinks, wondering why he hadn't recalled it sooner – looks at Sean and shrugs.

"Nothing. Must be the recession."

Erik thinks, _Bullshit_.

Sean says, "That's bullshit. Since when did people stop getting trashed just because they don't have any money?"

"Plus," Alex adds. "It's Wasted Wednesday."

"No, dude, it's Thirsty Thursday."

"I'm pretty sure it's Wednesday."

"Wait, maybe it's whatever Friday is."

"Fucked Up Friday?"

"That's it."

"…are you sure?"

"It's two in the morning on a Thursday," Erik intercedes, before the _sun rises_.

"You know what?" Murphy says, looking exhausted. "Why don't you kids take that on the house? Consider it a welcome back gift."

Alex quirks a brow. "This is my first year."

"Dude," Sean says, punching him on the shoulder. "_Dude_. _Who _protests free beer?"

Alex rubs at his arm. "Alright, _Jesus_."

"Thanks, Murph."

Alex and Sean scurry out the door, leaving the sound of a dull, old door chime behind as they continue to argue about the technicalities of which excuse-to-get-drunk day it is.

"Hm," is all Murphy says as Erik pays and accepts the tall, opaque bag with a nod of thanks. And Erik's more than a little grateful for the man's breviloquence. He's had enough human interaction for the day. For the _week_, actually, but he has class tomorrow afternoon. And the morning after that. In the meantime, he just wants to hole himself up in his apartment, draw the blinds and drink. And pace. And drink. All this until he can't think straight anymore, at the very least.

Needless to say, about three hours, thirty minutes and who-gives-a-shit-how-many-seconds later that night (or morning, whichever), when he's looking across the alley at Charles Xavier, and the damnable little man has the audacity to look a confusing mixture of guilty and sympathetic as he cradles his left arm, he vows never to consume vodka _ever again_, as a rolling stomach and a blooming headache ought to be the _least_ of his worries.

* * *

><p>Sort of a cliffhanger thing! I apologize. Also, reviews are appreciated. Like, a <em>lot<em>.

Happy reading and writing.


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